Monday, January 20, 2014

Mathematics Past Its Prime (so to speak)


This year's annual Edge  question was, "What scientific idea is ready for retirement?"

The (~175) replies are listed here:

http://www.edge.org/contributors/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement

There are a great many wonderful responses, but I'll just cite a few which impinge directly on mathematics (but do take a gander at the entire thought-provoking list):

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25414 (Charles Seife)

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25401 (Nassim Taleb)

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25349 (Emanuel Derman)

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25345 (Carlo Rovelli)

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25492  (Bart Kosko)

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25344  (Max Tegmark)

Interestingly, a majority of these have issues with some aspect of that whipping-boy, statistics.


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