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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
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Francis on Sunday November 13 2016, @10:01PM
That's really not true. Mathematics is much more precise when it comes to describing things than English is. What's more, since many people in physics are not native English speakers, using math is preferable as that's something that they've all got in common. If you want to describe the motion of particles, or forces, the natural way of doing that is via some form of mathematical notation. Doing so with English leads to a huge loss in both precision and readability.
Having lots of mathematical equations on each page for a field like physics isn't really a problem. It would be a problem for a field like sociology where there's a less precise level of understanding available.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @11:28PM
It would be a problem for a field like sociology where there's a less precise level of understanding available.
What exactly are you saying? Are you implying that sociology is not a precise science? Do you not realize that social sciences deal with actual data, facts from the real world, and statistics, not the imaginary mumbo-jumbo world where theorists posit things like "particles" and "dark matter" and then use "numbers" to say stringy theoretical things about them!
Doing so with English leads to a huge loss in both precision and readability.
This is completely wrong! The only reason that English does this is that the majority of people who speak English are idiots, idiots and Americans. But I repeat myself. Perhaps you should speak auf Deutsch, for great science! Who do you think invented sociology?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Francis on Monday November 14 2016, @04:26AM
It's not completely wrong, you'd run into the exact same problem in German, French, Mandarin or Swahili in terms of trying to describe things in a language that's designed for communicating other things. We chose English as the standard because that was the dominant language at the time when it was standardized. It had been French, Latin, Greek and various other languages depending upon the era, but English was spread widely enough that it was standardized to. The same way that if you're a pilot, then you'd better know how to speak English.
As for sociology, no it's not a precise science and the whole idea that it is is rather ridiculous. Apart from age and a few extremely rudimentary indicators, none of it is quantitative data, it's qualitative data which gets interpreted as best as possible, but lacks a uniform measure. It's not like a mile or a KG which are defined units that can be used as such, most of the data you find cropping up in the social sciences is heavily dependent upon the conditions for replication and as such, much of the time fails because of the lack of reliability in the measures.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 13 2016, @11:48PM
That's really not true. Mathematics is much more precise when it comes to describing things than English is. What's more, since many people in physics are not native English speakers, using math is preferable as that's something that they've all got in common. If you want to describe the motion of particles, or forces, the natural way of doing that is via some form of mathematical notation. Doing so with English leads to a huge loss in both precision and readability.
Sure, you have to keep in mind that your paper may be read by someone who can barely read English. But it's still better than solid math. Sorry.
I might add that I speak from experience here. My first math paper was utter crap. It was an interesting though relatively simple result on shoehorning the fractional part (the remainder after you subtract off the integer part) of geometric like sequences (the sequence increases in each term by a factor that is bounded from below) into a narrow slot (say between 0 and some epsilon greater than 0). I wrote it as part of a master's thesis on such things. The problem though was that it was a poorly written wall of math and had a lot of extraneous detail as well.
Sure, the person who doesn't understand English could eventually puzzle out what was in the paper, but it would have taken a while. I could do a lot better, such as taking one or two pages to describe what earlier took me half a dozen. So seriously, I believe even for people who have trouble with written English, an approach which is more sparing of math formulas would be better.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Francis on Monday November 14 2016, @04:42AM
I don't agree with that at all and decades of trying to read as various authors try to convey in English what should be conveyed in math just reinforce the notion that it's sheer madness to try and use language designed for people to communicate such ideas.
The point is, that if the math is written in a way that requires people to puzzle their way through it, then either the math was improperly written or was targeted at the wrong audience. It's not the fault of the math as a language anymore than it would be using Shakespearean prose to communicate the rules on the customs and immigration forms. One shouldn't blame English for that, they should blame it on the idiot that thought it was a good idea to use archaic words and grammar to express something that requires a lower level of English.
Same thing here. If you're going to comment on the equations, that's fine, but you're going to lose a ton of precision in doing so and if you don't, that suggest that you probably fucked up the math in some way. Either you reduced it too far, or you didn't use sensible notation during the process. Either way, that's not the fault of the math, it's an indication that the people using it didn't know what they were talking about.
Day after day, I run into books written by learned morons where they removed information by simplifying things that shouldn't be simplified. They're still mathematically valid equations, but they've removed so much of the information, that you can no longer understand it, you just have to memorize it. And that's a shame.
In this case, why on earth would anybody in their right mind throw out all the information by trying to shoehorn things into English that make much more sense being expressed using math? Right now I'm reading an engineering textbook and the author has done a heroic job of making the English comprehensible and relevant, but it's still not as good as just using the appropriate math to communicate most of the ideas he's looking to communicate.
Anybody wishing to get into a field like physics are engineering ought to be prepared for the relevant abstract thought, both in terms of reading and writing. Blaming the math for operator error is rather immature and isn't to be encouraged.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 14 2016, @09:38AM
I don't agree with that at all and decades of trying to read as various authors try to convey in English what should be conveyed in math just reinforce the notion that it's sheer madness to try and use language designed for people to communicate such ideas.
Well, I didn't say avoid math altogether. But a lot can be and should be communicated by normal written language because it's a better tool for the task than math is.