Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should More Math and Equations Be Used In the Popular Press?
raque writes "The NY Times recently published two op-eds in their Philosophy section, The Stone, discussing how Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is abused. The second is a followup to the first. The author struggled to make clear his point and left the impression he was creating a strawman argument. In his followup he said he was avoiding equations because he was writing for a general audience. I replied to both articles, asking whether showing some basic equations would have worked better, allowing math to illustrate where metaphors struggled. Now I'm asking the same question to everyone on Slashdot. Would Dr. Callendar have been better off just diving in and dealing with Heisenberg and quantum mechanics using the tools that were developed for it?"
Probability that more maths equations should be used > 0
Without math, it's impossible to convey what you're trying to convey. The press is way too dumbed down already, and many times I've read science stories that are just plain misleading as they try to simplify the message.
Putting equations into news stories means that some people won't understand them, but most importantly it will encourage some of those people to investigate further, and learn how to read equations. If there's no math in the popular press in the first place, then there's no incentive for people to improve themselves.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
But they should start with adding footnotes with references first. Most popular science articles don't even mention their sources properly, which sometimes makes it really hard to follow up on them even if you are a scientist.
Everybody not willing to understand simple mathematics (with explanations) is being willfully ignorant. There is no way to reach such people, they would not comprehend the text either...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They should start by using proper units. I know the USA is not metric, so they can use feet, miles and pounds, but football fields, states of delaware and volkswagens are not proper units. (and especially Library of Comgresses)
I've written lots of reports with math formulas (in Latex) where they are needed. Most, if not all, the intended readers have a Ph.D. in experimental physics or optics but I noticed that unless the math is really trivial, they will not follow. Even the slightest math supported reasoning will throw them off. That experience tells me that math for the general audience is probably not a good idea. It is simply pointless the be correct if you are not coming across. Who hears the tree falling in the forest.
The general rule regarding the depth of detail in publications should be that they need to be understandable by the target audience. If you write for the general public, then the base text should be layman style, with some pointers where to get more in-depth information for those, who are above the average and more knowledgeable in the specific field. If the target audience is academic and/or scientific community of a specific field, then that's a totally different matter, and the text should be as to-the-point and in-depth as possible, since anyone from the audience would be able to produce superficial treatment of a topic in their field, even if they are not utmost experts of the specific topic, and they'll require exact and deep elaboration of the subject to be able to judge the subtleties, novelties, benefits, etc. I'd say that's all, and it's really not 'rocket science', just spend some time getting to know who'll you'll address with your writing.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Absolutely not.
Wikipedia has already fallen prey to this. Articles on all these things are just dense reference manuals iseful only to graduates in their subjects rather than enlightening explanations.
They failed when those same people got full of themselves taking over the subject matter. They are as useless as a "man page" on regular expressions.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Equations are short hand and full of a form of jargon specific to a field, in terms of the arcane symbols used to represent a property or constant, with the explanation of what each symbol means buried in the text. They are great at condensing meaning, and allowing somebody familiar with them to manipulate them easily. But they are actually terrible at conveying meaning to someone not familiar with the field it is describing.
Often diagrams are the best way to explain mathematical concepts where possible. In the end, most scientist presents with a set of equations or concept to understand, will inevitably spend some time plotting out or trying to pictorially described what it means, to help understand it. So why not short circuit that?
Most literate people could probably handle arithmetic, fractions, simple exponents, some basic geometry, and linear equations.
However, I would not expect a general-audience article to feature calculus, statistics (beyond references to the mean and median), complex algebra, differentials, etc. As in, everything past pre-algebra class is sketchy, at best.
But algebra beyond linear equations, any kind of complex geometry (beyond rote formulas), calculus, just about anything with a sigma symbol in it, etc. I'm a Computer Engineer, and I don't remember how to do any of that stuff. Format of an equation describing a parabola? Method for computing integrals? How to calculate Standard Deviation? I've forgotten it all; it was 15+ years ago, and has no relevance to my day-to-day life. I could probably pick it up again relatively quickly if I needed to (okay, except for calculus and linear/diffEq; I sucked at it even at the time), but yeah, my eyes would start glazing over any article that relied on my understanding of even moderately complex math.