Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
Law of large numbers, opportunity cost, antifragility, all the major psychological biases, vector spaces, and fundamental theorem of arithmetic for starters
And Bayes theorem!
And Bayes theorem!
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Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
I'd aim for something much more fundamental than that. I think the scientific definition of fact and theory should be more widely known. There are many indications that when laymen speaks of "facts", they mean something closer to what one would expect in a court-room debate ("I've presented the relevant facts, your honor!") or consumer-research ("I've researched all the facts") ... and something closer to "wild guess" or "hypothesis" when they talk about theory.
I would actually quite doubt that very many non-scientists can define what scientific fact, scientific law, and scientific theory means in the way they're using in science.
I would actually quite doubt that very many non-scientists can define what scientific fact, scientific law, and scientific theory means in the way they're using in science.
Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
+1.
But I'll go with the Dunning-Krueger effect this year.
But I'll go with the Dunning-Krueger effect this year.
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Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
I'm on that Edge email list. But the topics are not usually as interesting as I thought they would be when I subscribed.
Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
I'd vote for "uncertainty" (or "tolerance" in the engineering sense). Even the most trusted measurements have some degree of uncertainty, and some truths are more reliable than others. Most people have a very difficult time dealing with the concept of uncertainty.
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Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
linear vs. exponential growth/decay
Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
some economic insights like subjective value theory, broken window fallacy, the seen vs. the unseen..
Re: Edge.org 2017 Question: What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?
Anthropogenic Climate Change and its social, world-scale solutions