if (biology paper) then (28% fewer citations per math equation per page)

[Roger Critchlow-2]

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 --

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[David Eric Smith]

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

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Stephen Guerin]

Based on the paper title ""Heavy use of equations impedes
communication among biologists", the authors seemed concerned about
academic communication though ironically publish behind a paywall.
Perhaps the Mesur folks at LANL/Indiana can quantify the influence of
paywalls on citation count and publish a follow up paper:

"Heavy use of paywalls impedes communication among scientists"

Johan, any data on this?

-Stephen

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On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> 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