Articles Tagged with arguments

Beginning with a question mark

The written and the spoken word

We ask a question: how do you ask a question?

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A new type of paradoxer

Collective individuals

Has the internet made possible a new form of anti-science?

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Providing proof

If-then-therefore

Doing proofs in Geometry class is hard.  Teaching how to do them is harder.

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The seasons are complicated

It’s not one thing, but another

Our astronomer adds some complication to the season.

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Plato’s fallacy

Education is good, but it has its limits

A scientist cautions against the idea behind the philosopher-king.

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Business books

A different form of literature

Our consultants encounter a type of writing that seems terribly strange, until they realize what it’s for.

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More on paradoxers

Some features of the species

Our chief consultant writes:

piSome weeks ago I mentioned paradoxers, those people from outside a certain science who come up with some amazing or important result that, sadly, is not accepted by those inside–mostly because it’s not true.  I promised to describe the outstanding characteristics of this fascinating species; here are two.

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Learning the stories

Using words instead of math

Here on the 100th birthday of General Relativity our science consultants were pondering why Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were so easy for them to accept but so hard for people a century ago.  Certainly it’s not because we’re more insightful or brighter scientists–quite the opposite.  Nor is it that we’re better at math; again the opposite is true, and these are highly mathematical subjects.  We finally concluded that we’re comfortable with the theories because we were told the stories, word-descriptions of what the math means, from an early stage and so the theories never seemed impossibly strange.  The stories are important.  But it’s also important for both scientists and laymen to understand their limitations.

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“I was, like, you know. . .”

A different kind of communication

Our astronomer has often found himself traveling on public transport and occasionally eating alone at crowded restaurants. This means he has overheard many a conversation, unintentionally to be sure (he lacks the gossip gene, or alternatively the instincts of the spy). Many of them have been very irritating to him, and at least he sat down to work out why.

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What were the odds against that?

Concidence, probability and asking the right question

Our chief consultant writes:

diceWe’ve all had it happen: some unexpected, unusual occurrence, and someone asks: “What were the odds against that happening?” As an exclamation, an alternative to the pedestrian, “That’s unusual,” this is fine. Language should have flexibility and the freedom of metaphor. This becomes a problem, however, when the unusual event is taken to imply unknown laws of physics or perhaps sinister forces at work.

Actually working out probabilities in any but the simplest cases can be pretty tedious, and we’re not about to get into that here. But it’s easy to make basic mistakes in setting up this kind of question (respected scientists have done so); we present two rules to help keep you out of trouble, even if you’re not going to punch any numbers into your computer.

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