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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);}
Should articles be written with intelligence and nuance when writing for a "general audience"?
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.
"The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc2. Early in 1983, Hawking approached Simon Mitton, the editor in charge of astronomy books at Cambridge University Press, with his ideas for a popular book on cosmology. Mitton was doubtful about all the equations in the draft manuscript, which he felt would put off the buyers in airport bookshops that Hawking wished to reach. It was with some difficulty that he persuaded Hawking to drop all but one equation.[4] In addition to Hawking's notable abstention from presenting equations, the book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time it may not be true as after all the book sold rather well.
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?
Do you have an equation to back that law up?
...but /. doesn't support math markup.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says no.
And at least in this particular case, "no" is indeed the correct answer. Equations can never be a substitute for actual understanding. You can use equations to develop understanding by starting from an earlier point and transform the initial equation to establish a new fact. But where do you start with quantum mechanics? "Quantum states are being represented by rays in a complex Hilbert space"?
If anything, equations can be used to create an argumentum ad auctoritatem, and I'm not sure that this is a good thing.
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Most people simply do not have the mental capacity to comprehend the meaning of 1 + 1 = 2
I work with integers modulo 2, you insensitive clod!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Indeed. It's also interesting to note that Einstein's original papers are eminently readable to the Layman, compared to the kind of papers we see in journals today. Perhaps that's due to the complexity of the mathematics now advanced at the bleeding edge, or perhaps it's because journals try to be even more economical with space than they used to be. I don't know.
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.
Indeed. It's also interesting to note that Einstein's original papers are eminently readable to the Layman, compared to the kind of papers we see in journals today. Perhaps that's due to the complexity of the mathematics now advanced at the bleeding edge, or perhaps it's because journals try to be even more economical with space than they used to be. I don't know.
Be careful, they seem readable but they're full of subtilities (and in some places even contain errors) especially his 1905 article on the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.
And furthermore while they "are" readable to today's audiences because we have almost a century dealing with special relativistic phenomena (it has even entered popular culture) it was not so at the time.
Take that into account.