Related papers: Role of Mathematics in Physical Sciences
Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think…
This overview article highlights the critical role of mathematics in artificial intelligence (AI), emphasizing that mathematics provides tools to better understand and enhance AI systems. Conversely, AI raises new problems and drives the…
"Is math useful?" might sound as a trick question. And it is. Of course math is useful, we live in a data-filled world and every aspect of life is totally entwined with math applications, both trivial and subtle applications, of both basic…
Since ancient times, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in its description of physical phenomena. As humankind enters a period of advancement where the completion of the much coveted theory of quantum gravity is at hand, there is…
In recent years, computing has become an important part of the way we teach and learn physics. Teachers, both at high school and college levels, now use computational activities in many of their courses. Physics departments are offering…
Scientific research involves mathematical modelling in the context of an interactive balance between theory, experiment and computation. However, computational methods and tools are still far from being appropriately integrated in the high…
As David Berlinski writes (1997), the existence and nature of mathematics is a more compelling and far deeper problem than any of the problems raised by mathematics itself. Here we analyze the essence of mathematics making the main emphasis…
Pre-college mathematics modeling instruction often frames mathematics as being separated from reasoning about the real world -- and commonly treats reasoning mathematically and reasoning about the real-world context as separate stages of a…
Learning to create, use, and evaluate models is a central element of becoming a scientist. In physics, we often begin an analysis of a complex system with highly simplified or toy models. In introductory physics classes, we tend to use them…
Physics is formulated in terms of timeless classical mathematics. A formulation on the basis of intuitionist mathematics, built on time-evolving processes, would offer a perspective that is closer to our experience of physical reality.
Mathematics can serve many functions in physics. It can provide a computational system, reflect a physical idea, conveniently encode a rule, and so forth. A physics student thus has many different options for using mathematics in his…
Statistical mechanics is one of the most powerful and elegant tools in the quantitative sciences. One key virtue of statistical mechanics is that it is designed to examine large systems with many interacting degrees of freedom, providing a…
Since its existence, the computer tool has often supported mathematicians, whether it is to implement an approximation method (numerical calculation of a root, of an integral, ...) or to simulate a phenomenon (geometric in nature,…
Some relations between physics and finitary and infinitary mathematics are explored in the context of a many-minds interpretation of quantum theory. The analogy between mathematical ``existence'' and physical ``existence'' is considered…
We commonly think of mathematics as bringing precision to application domains, but its relationship with computer science is more complex. This experience report on the use of Racket and Haskell to teach a required first university CS…
There is no mysterious link between mathematics and physics, because both of them are human inventions designed to study the world.
Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data. Yet, in most…
Several concrete examples in quantum information are discussed to demonstrate the importance of proper modeling that relates the mathematical description to real-world applications. In particular, it is shown that some commonly accepted…
Many problems in industry --- and in the social, natural, information, and medical sciences --- involve discrete data and benefit from approaches from subjects such as network science, information theory, optimization, probability, and…
Mathematics has become inescapable in modern, digitized societies: there is hardly any area of life left that isn't affected by it, and we as mathematicians play a central role in this. Our actions affect what others, in particular our…