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posted by janrinok on Sunday November 13 2016, @04:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-can-count-on-it dept.

Physicists avoid highly mathematical work despite being trained in advanced mathematics, new research suggests. The study, published in the New Journal of Physics, shows that physicists pay less attention to theories that are crammed with mathematical details. This suggests there are real and widespread barriers to communicating mathematical work, and that this is not because of poor training in mathematical skills, or because there is a social stigma about doing well in mathematics.

Dr Tim Fawcett and Dr Andrew Higginson, from the University of Exeter, found, using statistical analysis of the number of citations to 2000 articles in a leading physics journal, that articles are less likely to be referenced by other physicists if they have lots of mathematical equations on each page. [...] Dr Higginson said: "We have already showed that biologists are put off by equations but we were surprised by these findings, as physicists are generally skilled in mathematics.

"This is an important issue because it shows there could be a disconnection between mathematical theory and experimental work. This presents a potentially enormous barrier to all kinds of scientific progress."

http://phys.org/news/2016-11-physicists-mathematics.html

[Abstract]: Statistical Analysis of the Effect of Equations on Citations


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:36PM (#426295)
    So what you are saying is that the majority of physicists lack the math skills to understand their own field. Got it.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:40PM (#426297)

    Well, programmers who write code similar to how math is usually written are called shitty programmers for producing nigh unreadable, difficult-to-maintain code. It's possible to understand it, but it's an unnecessary waste of time. It's laziness at its finest, but the tradition would be too hard to break.

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:54PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 13 2016, @06:54PM (#426303)
      So using math in a math-heavy field is lazy. Man, there are a ton of lazy fucks in the field of pure mathematics then.

      thanks for clearing that up.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 13 2016, @09:42PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 13 2016, @09:42PM (#426352) Journal

        So using math in a math-heavy field is lazy. Man, there are a ton of lazy fucks in the field of pure mathematics then.

        It can be actually. If I copy my math work directly from my notes into the computer with little to no explanation, that's going to be pretty lazy right there. The laziness here is not the using of math, it's not doing the work to make the math more understandable to the reader.

        • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday November 14 2016, @06:53PM

          by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2016, @06:53PM (#426616)
          Ah, and you can state, as fact, that this is the case with every paper that the study in question evaluated then?
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 14 2016, @11:51PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2016, @11:51PM (#426746) Journal

            Ah, and you can state, as fact, that this is the case with every paper that the study in question evaluated then?

            No. But it would be a fact that your demand would be irrelevant to my earlier observation since I wasn't characterizing papers but rather a common and lazy technique for slamming out papers which just happens to result in high math content.

            • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:27PM

              by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:27PM (#426962)
              OK, then you have experience in publishing scientific papers? I mean, why would I believe you are speaking from a position of authority on this subject, and not just making up your argument? You are making a claim that there is "a common and lazy technique for slamming out papers which just happens to result in high math content". Have anything to back up that argument?
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:48PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:48PM (#427007) Journal

                OK, then you have experience in publishing scientific papers?

                I even have experience in publishing scientific papers where I copied the math from my notes into the paper in said lazy way that I just described. In my defense, I was a lot younger then and didn't realize what a mess I was making or the enormous patience of my advisors. It takes a lot of learning and experience to write decent math IMHO.

                Have anything to back up that argument?

                Here's the abstract [projecteuclid.org] and paper [projecteuclid.org] in all their shining glory. Tell me I'm wrong. Even worse, a year earlier I had made up overheads of that work and presented those in public. That was even worse since I learned a bit about writing and presentation of math afterward.

                And LaTex is a life saver here. I can't imagine how this paper would look written in Word, but it would be even uglier.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday November 13 2016, @10:29PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday November 13 2016, @10:29PM (#426368) Homepage

      If you worked for ID and you asked Carmack to explain his fast inverse square root [wikipedia.org] in his code comments, the whole shop would have laughed your ass right out the door.

      float Q_rsqrt( float number )
      {
              long i;
              float x2, y;
              const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

              x2 = number * 0.5F;
              y = number;
              i = * ( long * ) &y;      // evil floating point bit level hacking
              i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );     // what the fuck?
              y = * ( float * ) &i;
              y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration
      // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

              return y;
      }

      • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 14 2016, @05:33PM

        by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday November 14 2016, @05:33PM (#426591) Journal

        Not too hard to grok this. The evil floating point bit level hack accesses the float memory as a long int and stores it to i. Then it's shifted right by one and subtracted from the magic number 0x5f3759df. It's then converted back to a float and stored to y. Then its off to a bit of math to take the original number (divided by two), multiplied by the square of y, subtracted from 1.5 and multiplied once again by y all as float. An optional second iteration perhaps further refines the answer. Then the result is returned. The magic number is probably a constant and easily conveyed in hex form that allows the result to properly align to the IEEE float format to avoid NaN errors.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 13 2016, @08:35PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 13 2016, @08:35PM (#426331) Journal

    So what you are saying is that the majority of physicists lack the math skills to understand their own field. Got it.

    Well, you could try reading my post to see what I actual said. Got it?