So, it is party time again, folks!

[wiseheart]

Each year this time, we launch my virtual birthday party, which starts on October 1 and ends on October 9 at midnight, sharp. The goals of the party are to post as many comments and collapse as many threads as possible, on as many new pages as we can. It is always great fun, as you can see if you check out the similar entries of the last few years.

This year, I'll also throw the real party at mid-time - and post the recipes of all the food that will be there for you, so that you can all participate if you want to. Virtual food has no calories.

Fandom-related discussions are as welcome as the ones about coffee or chocolate (just to name a few favourites from previous years), and, of course, pictures and recipes of birthday cakes. ;)

So, drop by, tell your story, post your pics or silly poems, ask questions you always wanted to ask and have a good time!

Soledad, in excited expectation




Oh, and by the way, to provide birthday gifts hobbit-style, I've got a revived story and a Kansas 2 update for you.

Enjoy!

Comments

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking of when I did A-levels, it was uncommon to do sciences without at least AO maths. The most common patterns among my science-studying friends were three sciences plus AO maths among medics or biologists; chemistry, biology & maths/stats among biologists; or physics, chemistry, maths & further maths among physicists/mathematicians. What annoyed me is that no-one bothered telling me that A'level physics (in my day & with the syllabus we did) was a waste of time -- it was completely trivial -- while missing out on doing further maths effectively prevented me from studying university-level chemistry.

I'm not sure quite how true your statement is for biomedicine -- whilst the mathematically illiterate will struggle, there are many niches with little maths much beyond O'level. Also I worked in my vacations in a QC chemical lab where most of the permanent employees had no maths qualifications; the various spectrometers that measured the results were all completely automated.

I've been thinking about maths is the language in which we express science and I think it explains why I became increasingly disenchanted with hard sciences -- I don't find mathematical descriptions at all satisfying unless I can get some sense (at least occasionally) of how the system really is (for some sense of 'really is'). At A'level, the qualitative descriptions gave me occasional numinous feelings that I understood how (parts of) the universe really worked. Whereas, say particle spin, as far as I understand it, has no physical meaning -- it's just a convenient fiction; that didn't feel satisfying.

Sorry this is long, I've been mulling this over all day!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Long comments are good!

I do think it is still true that most people who do an A-level science subject such as physics or chemistry will also take maths, but since it isn't a requirement, the science subject will be taught as if the students aren't taking maths. At least in physics, this leaves it at mostly a show-and-tell sort of level, rather than giving the students proper understanding of how and why things work. I also think it gives them a very incorrect impression of what university level science is going to be like; the first year, one-third of the courses our physics students do are maths, and another third are (sort of) disguised-maths in the form of computational physics, with only a third being straight up physics. There was a similar level of maths for the first year students in Materials when I was at Imperial, and they too were often surprised by it...

I do recognize that there are niches of science where you can get by without maths, but I usually think they would actually do better if they had a deeper mathematical understanding. While you can use a spectrometer, to take your example, and just take the data it spits out, you will be better able to understand what it means if you understand the working principles and the data analysis that goes on in the 'black box', and that generally means understanding some maths. It isn't necessarily the 'hard core' algebra and calculus, but being able to understand statistics is extremely useful for any discipline that deals in large data sets...

Improving the mathematical literacy of the populous in general, is a topic close to my heart, and it upsets me that we fail people so badly in this. A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.

Sorry, I get quite worked up about this topic, as you may have noticed!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

It's something I feel strongly about too, as you may have noticed.

I hadn't thought about the effect on the syllabus of not requiring maths. Certainly the subject I took was off-puttingly noddy: by far the easiest of the four A'levels I took. Is 16-18 year level physics more interesting in Sweden?

I'd agree that almost everyone would do better with more mathematical understanding.

A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree 100% with this. I think there are several ways of understanding systems, and reducing complex behaviour to equations is, I think, sometimes a substitute for, rather than an aid to, understanding the actual mechanism(s) involved.