• Question: Which science is the most important for your everyday life?

    Asked by koalatea13lemon to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Maths!

      Maths is about being able to express the relationships between things in a way that lets you study it and also make predictions (that’s all alegbra is – a way of expressing relationships between quantities, e.g. speed and time in physics).

      So every science needs to use maths to express its laws and principles. Also, by being comfortable using maths, you become much better at understanding whether arguments make sense, how to understand risk (.e.g should i do this bungee jump or fly in a plane or eat ten chocolate bars a day or whatever) and where people say things which don’t make sense (most often, spotting a pattern and then saying that this causes that… happens all the time! For instance, a stupid example could be that in India, most people who can’t read are very poor. This doesn’t mean that poor people are stupid, but it does mean they’ve not been given the opportunity to learn. That sounds obvious but you see that sort of stupid reasoning in the newspapers all the time!)

      So basically, maths helps your think more clearly 🙂

    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Is maths a science? Hmmmmm

      I would say physics, since everything is just physics anyway 😉

    • Photo: Jess Bean

      Jess Bean answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Chemistry! Chemistry is the reason you’re alive in the first place!

Comments

  • Photo: koalatea13lemon

    koalatea13lemon commented on :

    Other than science, what subject would you say is the most important?

  • Photo: Christina

    Christina commented on :

    @Steve – I hope applied maths is a science otherwise I’m here under false pretences! 🙂

    @Koalatea – other than science, I think history is really important because it teaches you how we got to where we are today, how there are different ways of living and organising a society and the patterns in how societies behave (eg lots of young men with no jobs often leads to social unrest!)

  • Photo: spacenut1982

    spacenut1982 commented on :

    I would agree with the above, I think maths has the most practical application, but also physics is quite real life, but I also think biology is very important because its learning about your body and the environment which I don’t think you could get away with avoiding in life!! 🙂