• Question: why did you want to be a scientist when you you did well in you mathematics

    Asked by chemicdonz to Peter, Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark on 18 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by iloveanimals, elishawarwick1, tarax.
    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      maths is great, but i prefer the application of maths to explain the world around us. when you get to university level the boundaries between the two are kind of blurred. i did 2 years of the maths degree classes at uni and really enjoyed it, but always preferred those parts of maths that are applied to physics. other people on the course enjoyed the parts that apply to computer science, or statistics, or even just maths for maths sake. it’s good to be exposed to all that as you can pick the topics that interest you.

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Science is one of the best ways to use your maths skills. It’s really satisfying when you can mathematically predict or explain the result of an experiment.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      I was never that excited about doing maths for maths’ sake – it all got very abstract. I always found it more interesting when there was a practical reason for doing it, i.e. physics.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      My Favourite module in maths during A-level was Mechanics, and I think I will follow the pack with this one, and say its all about the applying the language of maths to a scientific problem.

      The best bit for me is being able to use maths to simplify the computer codes I’m writing, and sometimes a clever bit of maths can save hours and hours of time processing results! Its similar to increasing the number of explosions you can see in a game without your console slowing down too much 🙂

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      Maths is a language that science uses to write the text book on Nature, it can also be used by others to write the story of things like the stock market. Science is the most fun use of Maths, you can write stories and then test if they actually exist in Nature.

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