Science and Math!

I'm most interested in mathematics. As for which area of math... don't ask me that yet! I haven't picked a specialty! >_<

Types of mathematics I like include analysis, geometry, abstract algebra, dynamical systems, category theory, formal logic, set theory, theory of computation, and pretty much any other area I've had even a little experience with.

I've never seen Evolution happen in laboratory conditions, have you ?

~clutches flying spaghetti monster plushy~

Okay what Honorius said was correct, biology covers a wide spectrum. Stuff like biochemistry is going to be as hard as it's gets.

But Evolution psychology for want of a better word, bullshit.

Its full of ludicrous, vaguely offensive and unsubstantial claims, like how it's 'explains' that women are attracted to red because berries grow in the forest.

Ugh.

edited 25th Sep '11 1:36:27 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Evolutionary psychology is only vaguely familiar to me, but if I'm guessing correctly the scaled-up version of that is sociobiology, which varies, for me, from vaguely annoying to strangely ineffectual.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Why, yes, I did (well, not I personally, but you know what I mean).

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I was being facetious

hashtagsarestupid

Yeah, I supposed so, But it was a cool experiment, and I wanted to link it

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

True that, it is cool

hashtagsarestupid

1. Computer Science is math. It's a kind of math, in a way.

2. What are all the major fields/categories of math, exactly?

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

>Implying that Psychology is a soft science. The only person who think that haven't actually studied it beyond the Pop Psych bullshit.

I'll have you know I am a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.

edit:

Eh? I haven't heard of such a claim being made.

edited 25th Sep '11 2:33:29 AM by whaleofyournightmare

Dutch Lesbian

Psychology!

Which is a soft science, at least.

Evolutionary Psych is bullshit?

Nonesense! It's a little weird, and I find its logic inconsistent, but in Psychology, you gotta use all the types to formulate a well-reasoned conclusion from the data.

Tbh, I'm a cognitive and social psychology man.

No, I said the claim was bullshit but imo Psychology is a Hardsoft science.

Dutch Lesbian

Yeah, I was agreeing with you, Whale.

It's better to call it a social science or a humanties, really. Steps over the whole hard vs. soft thingy, which really is annoying.

You're all fricking scientists, doing science!

Work the hell together!

Going a few posts back to answer USAF, ethology is studying animal behavior. It involves watching monkeys doing stuff and carefully noting how many times they do something.

If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied -Rudyard Kipling

It is math + Black Magic

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

We see evolution in the lab all the time! What are multiple-antibiotic-resistant bacteria if not evolution?

Be not afraid...

Quite you 

hashtagsarestupid

Evolution isn't true because we didn't see it happening. Neither is a large part of geology and Ceasar crossing the Rubicon.

If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied -Rudyard Kipling

Just a few semi-OT ramblings:

Ethology is basically Bonobos In Action? Sounds awesome! :-)

Is numerology a science, too? It ends on -ology, after all...

Oh and I always find it odd when people assume that programmers are good with numbers. IME, most are quite the contrary. They're good with figuring out how to get the numbers from that database, but if you tell them "that number cannot be right, this should be 4000 instead of 200", they have no idea what you're talking about.

I was very disappointed with numerology. I knew that it was incorrect, of course, but a few years ago I got curious to see what sort of funny mathematical systems they developed in their attempts to tap mystic forces.

What I found was just a handful of unimaginative, boring parlor tricks which require no more mathematics than what a rather dull middle school kid would be able to command. Couldn't they at least mess around with some sweet, sweet group theory? Or play a bit with simplicial complexes, which are trippy as hell?

Or, at the very least, pulled some cool tricks with Euclidean Geometry and Number Theory?

I mean, come on, you cannot open a random page of a random discrete math textbook without stumbling over some sort of mystical-looking diagram, and that was the best they could come up with?

edited 25th Sep '11 7:27:49 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

As does astrology... *Cough*

Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.

And Scientology... Er... I mean, Church of Happyology.

As for me, getting back on topic, I'm planning on getting a Ph.D. in economics. Which, as it turns out, is basically a degree in applied statistics and topology.

Physics, then all maths, then chemistry, then economics, then psychology/sociology/related fields as a whole, then everything else is sort of "oh that's interesting, but meh".

Physics is both very consistent in the way it works and observable in reality. Maths feels just as nice on the brain as does physics, but is not so readily observable (except through other fields). Chemistry is not so very consistent (except when you get right down to the physics involved), even though observable. Economics is neither particularly logical nor particularly observable in action, but it's got a huge practical worth, and some interesting philosophy involved in some respects, so that makes it pretty interesting. The others are pop-science as far as they concern me, so they can provide entertaining reading material and the like.

edited 25th Sep '11 7:45:50 AM by ekuseruekuseru

Topology?

I know that you economists use a lot of statistics and game theory, obviously, but I had no idea that topology had applications in economy...

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Surprising, isn't it.

As it turns out, one of the cornerstone theorems of modern economics (that under appropriate regularity conditions, there exists a price vector such that the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded across all markets simultaneously) requires topology to prove. If one likens the space of all possible prices for different goods to a vector (v) of n components in n-space and a function T that maps an n-dimensional vector back onto the space of n-dimensional vectors (this function maps the vector of prices onto another vector of prices), then the point that satisfies Tv = v is the equilibrium vector of prices for a given economy.

Assuming convexity of the functions of quantity supplied and quantity demanded (this turns out to not be unreasonable to assume), it can be shown with Brouwer and Kakutani fixed-point theorems that the set has such a fixed point; that is, that in general, there exists an equilibrium solution - that is, a vector of prices that equates supply and demand in all markets simultaneously.

Here's The Other Wiki's take on this concept.

edited 25th Sep '11 8:25:55 AM by DarkConfidant

Well, to be fair to numerology, a lot of it was developed by Greeks and Hebrews who didn't even have zero.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.