There's potentially an interesting operations research angle here too.

If I recite the story correctly, OR started from people tasked to place armor 
on WWII bombers, to meet the conflicting needs of protection and minimizing 
weight so they could carry more bombs. As one would expect, they started by 
studying where the holes were in the planes that came back shot-up.  Then it 
occurred to somebody that what they really wanted to know was: where were the 
holes on the planes that didn't come back.  And OR was born.

It would be interesting to know how much sample bias there is in this article 
because the author doesn't have access to the papers that never got published 
because the authors eventually died of old age before finding a way past the 
referees.  In this, I am quite happy to limit discussion to papers in which all 
reviews that actually address the content of the articles judge it to be 
correct and potentially useful.

Eric


On Aug 29, 2012, at 4:30 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

> We knew biologists were math averse, but now it's been quantified:
> 
>   http://www.pnas.org/content/109/29/11735
> 
> "The duo recommends that researchers use equations sparingly in their main 
> article text to ensure that their ideas reach a wide audience."
> 
> I haven't read past the abstract since the article is pay-walled.
> 
> -- rec --
> 
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Reply via email to