From Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera: … applied science, purposeful and determined, and pure science, playful and freely curious, continuously support and stimulate each other. The great nation of the future will be the one which protects the…
Blog Archives
How to double science research
Scientists spend 40% of their time chasing grants according to some estimates. Suppose they spend 20% of their time doing something else, such as teaching. That means they spend no more than 40% of their time doing research. If universities…
How mathematicians see physics
From the preface to Physics for Mathematicians: In addition to presenting the advanced physics, which mathematicians find so easy, I also want to explore the workings of elementary physics, and mysterious maneuvers — which physicists seem to find so natural…
History of weather prediction
I’ve just started reading Invisible in the Storm: The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather. The subtitle may be a little misleading. There is a fair amount of math in the book, but the ratio of history to math is…
Are tweets more accurate than science papers?
John Myles White brings up an interesting question on Twitter: Ioannidis thinks most published biological research findings are false. Do you think >50% of tweets are false? I’m inclined to think tweets may be more accurate than research papers, mostly…
Sun, milk, red meat, and least-squares
I thought this tweet from @WoodyOsher was pretty funny. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat … the least-squares method. I wouldn’t say these things are bad, but they are now viewed more critically than…
Personalized medicine
When I hear someone say “personalized medicine” I want to ask “as opposed to what?” All medicine is personalized. If you are in an emergency room with a broken leg and the person next to you is lapsing into a…
Cancer moon shots
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center announced a $3 billion research program today aimed at six specific forms of cancer. Acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome (AML and MDS) Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) Lung cancer Melanoma Prostate cancer Triple negative breast…
True versus Publishable
This weekend John Myles White and I discussed true versus publishable results in the comments to an earlier post. Methods that make stronger modeling assumptions lead to more statistical confidence, but less actual confidence. That is, they are more likely…
Flying to Mars in three days
Richard Campbell brought up an interesting idea in his recent Mars geek out show. Suppose you could travel to Mars accelerating at 1 g for the first half the trip, then decelerating at 1 g for the final half of…
Deniers, skeptics, and mavericks
Suppose a scientist holds a minority opinion. There’s a trend in journalism to call him a denier if you think he’s wrong, a skeptic if you don’t care, and a maverick if you think he may be right. If this…
Ancient understanding of tides
In his essay On Providence, Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) says the following about tides: In point of fact, their growth is strictly allotted; at the appropriate day and hour they approach in greater volume or less according as…
How things break
Venkatesh Rao wrote a blog post today Stress Failures versus Decay Failures. It reminded me of three other resources I recommend on how things break. The first is about how things literally break. For example, why the steel in the…
The cult of average
Shawn Achor comments on “the cult of the average” in science. So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the…
Chaotic versus random
From John D. Barrow’s chapter in Design and Disorder: The standard folklore about chaotic systems is that they are unpredictable. They lead to out-of-control dinosaur parks and out-of-work meteorologists. … Classical … chaotic systems are not in any sense intrinsically…
