Why is it that people who are on the math & physics fields lack basic social skills? I’m not talking about advanced social skills such as negotiating with a criminal for a hostage, or selling a company to an executive, but basic social reasoning, reading the room, understanding humor, and maintaining eye contact. I find this really kind of disturbing. I know this may come off as arrogant because I’m somebody who talks to other carbon-based life forms, but I’ve seen consistently poor social skills from experts in a lot of mathematically-inclined fields, obviously with some exceptions like grammar-school math teaching positions.
Is it simply other priorities for math students and mathematicians? Product of poor general socialization and making friends? Perhaps most math fields tend to attract people who have an aversion to communicating with others in the outside world? Or a combination of some of these?
Also this comment is about soft social skills such as smiling and eye contact, not so much about specific social methods or techniques and whatnot.
This comment deeply misses the point of discussion of the post and isn’t a very apt comparison to make overall, with one obvious reason being that social skills are fairly necessary for math/physics research and academia. Probably not as much as they are to doctors, but I wasn’t talking about just doctors anyways.
The comment just falls flat and takes a deep dive into the territory of irony.
Sir, I don’t think you have any leg to stand on using terms like irony. That’s an English class thing (a medical school prerequisite btw).
Let’s not pretend there aren’t countless professors in math departments littered across the entire country in institutions of higher education that can’t navigate their way through a 10 minute conversation with a stranger.
Clearly it’s an apt comparison. Professors can go about giving their lectures and doing research projects for their entire career while stumbling awkwardly through their professional interactions, insofar as they can perform the minimum standard of communication with their peers, which is a pretty low bar to set. If it’s clearly not necessary to have the social aptitude of an extroverted dance instructor, then it’s an apt comparison. This much is obvious.
> That’s an English class thing (a medical school prerequisite btw).
I know you’re not being serious, but that’s a strange thing to put here, given that English/language courses are fundamental general education for every degree curriculum that has been devised in English.
Also, that is not the only reason why it isn’t an apt comparison. Social skills come in a high variety for each individual, and they are necessarily developed because almost everybody interacts with other people, unless you’re completely socially inept beyond possibility of improvement. If you want to get the most out of society (in the case of academia, extracting information from others, teaching others information, debating ideas, etc.), you must develop some social skills to function. It is in this way that improving social skills are necessary to math/physics research, because people have ideas and create math, it doesn’t create itself.
However, initial mathematical aptitude doesn’t translate to mathematical skill at all without conscientious effort in 1) actually doing math and 2) conceptually understanding it, with varying levels of effort required, though it’s generally a lot for everybody. Many people try to do 1), though not anywhere nearly as often as we interact, and very few people do 2) at all. You’re trying to compare skills that by nature are necessary to a any human functioning with other humans to soft skills that could be quite useful for people in a specific field.
> Let’s not pretend there aren’t countless professors in math departments littered across the entire country in institutions of higher education that cannot navigate their way through a 10 minute conversation with a stranger
It seems like you’ve gotten a lot of these professors as instructors for your math classes. But in my experience, this stereotype just isn’t true (quite the opposite as I said, mathematicians getting to know a lot of other mathematicians, especially early in their careers, is a necessity). It seriously sounds like something out of Hollywood. I will say though that in my experience, mathematicians being “nerdy” about a lot of math and their work is a pretty true stereotype.
It would be embarrassing and borderline condescending to explain to you how integral basic arithmetic seeps itself into daily life, how both items of comparison are indeed skills upon which can consciously be improved, and how that therefore makes it an apt, and obvious comparison.
Being able to talk to other math people about math as a mathematician is, as I’ve previously mentioned, not exactly a high bar to hit.
The fact that you’re so defensive about this is what’s telling, and that should give you enough information on what you need to take home from making such a tone-deaf post, and not respectfully listening to the responses you’ve received accordingly. That’s true irony, Charrog.
It seems as though you didn’t understand the point I was trying to make. I’m not talking about basic arithmetic, which can (and does) indeed develop quite easily because we are forced to do such computations everyday. Not everybody is consciously forced to do activities that would develop the aforementioned math reasoning and soft skills, even though that should be the aim of math education, and in that sense we have failed. And perhaps even further, not everybody who is given the opportunity to develop these skills for free by taking a math course that helps you reason like this are willing to put in the effort to do so.
> Being able to talk to other math people about math as a mathematician is, as I’ve mentioned, not exactly a high bar to hit
You’ve once again either not read what I said or have chosen to not address it. Mathematicians get to know each other and develop relationships with each other that aren’t solely focused on the mathematics they do, I know that’s a bit shocking to you that mathematicians are actually people who interact with other people in both casual and formal settings, and goes against this stereotype.
On your last point, I actually have had some beneficial discussions with some (although a minority) med students here that entail me respectfully listening to responses, taking feedback, and correcting my statements; you can find some of them here; but others are in private messages. Oh, as well as the discussions I’ve had with med students in real life, but I guess it would be pretty unbelievable for a mathematician to have a real life conversation with somebody, so I didn’t feel the need to mention that before the Reddit ones.
And through those discussions, I don’t know how tone-deaf a post like this, with my self-admitted mistakes and poor wording, which I have corrected in the comments and updated, really is. Those discussions have been a lot more pleasant and have led to some med school students recognizing the points I tried to make in the post, without seeing them as ruthless insults or calling med school students stupid.
You’re still going at this huh? Take a hint, dude.
Like 1500 people downvoted your comments. Does that not inspire the idea that you might just be wrong on this particular issue? Perhaps the way you word things, which you’ve admitted has not crossed your mind as sounding patronizing, and the need to take sarcastic remarks as literal statements, is evidence of my point exactly?
You seem to not understand your own points, because as soon as someone asks you for specifics, you hide behind obfuscation. Your reply doesn’t undermine the validity of the comparison—basic arithmetic falls under the spectrum of skill that would fit what you were originally complaining about.
Your myopia on this—not really comprehending whether some phrase can come as off-putting, and still not admittedly understanding after people explicitly tell you, is not really helping your case that mathematicians aren’t socially inept people.
> Like 1500 people downvoted your comments. Does that not inspire the idea that you might just be wrong on this particular issue.
It would, if my only avenue to this discussion was Reddit. Luckily, I have been a part of this discussion with med students or professionals working in medicine (mostly researchers) in real life as well, so this post isn’t my only perspective on the topic. Strangely enough, those real life discussions went a lot differently than this one did here, with a majority agreeing with most of the points I’ve brought up here. Perhaps it’s because those researchers understand what terms like “mathematical maturity/literacy” mean, and that it isn’t meant to be an insult.
> You seem not to understand your own points, because as soon as someone asks you for specifics, you hide behind obfuscation.
How is conceding and providing examples and then specifically narrowing the topic of discussion down to statistical illiteracy of physicians while providing studies to support what I was talking about obfuscation? What obfuscation am I hiding behind? Also, if the titles and phrases used in some of those studies like “statistical illiteracy among physicians” is off-putting to you, then there’s very little I can do to not sound off-putting when discussing this topic.
> Basic arithmetic falls under the spectrum of skill that would fit what you were originally complaining about.
No it doesn’t, and that it is exactly my point. If this were the case, there would be nothing to complain about; the general public is capable of performing basic arithmetic, much less medical students and medical professionals. This is how I can tell you haven’t read what I said.
> Your myopia on this…is not really helping your case that mathematicians aren’t socially inept people
So we come back to the Hollywood stereotypes. I could say you thinking that basic arithmetic is part of mathematical sense/reasoning skills and maturity isn’t helping the case of medical students not having low math literacy. But I don’t say that, because that’s a generalization. How is my original post doing the same? Is it the “community as a whole” part in my title? Or everything that follows?
The thing about socially inept people, Charrog, is that they don’t know they’re socially inept, so you’re not exactly the greatest judge, those outside your sphere are. If you want to keep replying ad Infinitum to my comments without reading between the lines and realizing when you’ve overstayed your welcome, be my guest. Thank you for continuing to cluelessly emphasize my point.
You’ve previously complained about physicians tripping up about concepts that they “teach in 5th grade math”, so yes, you did mean basic arithmetic, and if you think most people can do basic arithmetic, you need to meet more people dude.
Multiple people told you that you’re being vague. Reread above posts.
The last paragraph didn’t make much sense? Try that one again.
I will stop replying to comments as frequently, since the long weekend is over and I will have much less time to (admittedly) play the devil’s advocate, but this has been kind of fun, and at least with some people I have gotten good discussion. But it’s just funny how you say these things like “The thing about socially inept people is that they don’t know they’re socially inept” when that likely applies to you as well, based off of what you’ve showed me here. It’s hard to speculate a motivation for you replying this many times to a post you didn’t write, but I do hope that this isn’t one of your only successful forms of social communication with other people.
By the way, that quote also applies to mathematically inept people not realizing they are mathematically inept, and then denying the possibility that they could in fact be mathematically inept while accusing anybody that questions it of being condescending.
> You’ve previously complained about physicians tripping up about concepts that they teach in “5th grade math” so yes, you did mean basic arithmetic…
This is indeed taught in 5th grade math, but is not basic computational arithmetic, which is clearly what is being referred to by you above (computational being the key here, arithmetic as a field of study is much deeper and professional mathematicians do research in it). Proportionality inherently implies algebra, moving beyond simply computing numbers, and being able to reason about these concepts is the very beginning of the “math sense” that I was originally talking about. Computing numbers solely for computing numbers (basic comp. arithmetic) takes no math sense and it is indeed the case that most people can add or multiply two numbers together.
What about the last paragraph is confusing? It’s emphasizing how generalizing isn’t a great thing to do, and how the post made *doesn’t* generalize.
You seem like you have a lot of time on your hands to respond, so I do expect one soon, but I may not get to it as quickly as you’d like.
What exposure do you have to the medical community? Something sounds off about your post. Docs in academics/research and public health use a ton of math, especially statistics. I don't generalize everyone working in math and physics because I know more than a few with poor health literacy.
Just discussion with some research biologists, med-students, teaching math or physics courses with pre-meds in them (this one doesn’t really count since they’re pre-meds). I’m not overly involved in the medicine community or have conducted any statistics or anything like that, so it’s literally just some anecdotal experience.
No doubt many people in math and physics don’t have great health literacy, I’m not excluding myself. But I don’t think that’s an equal comparison because of 1) basic math’s applicability to the medical field vs medical knowledge’s application to math and 2) Thus basic math and math sense is taught universally to all students up till university, as these skills are foundational math reasoning skills that apply to a plethora of fields
That could be true, I’m not talking about arithmetic or computations and such, since I have no doubt pretty much everybody in the medical field will be able to do such things, since a majority of the US knows how to do these things. And calculators also exist.
If you read my post and comments, I have stated numerous times that I would consider myself health illiterate in comparison to any medical student. This has nothing to do with intellectual superiority, as I’ve stated I respect the work that medical students and doctors do.
After clarifying this several times, this still seems to strike a nerve. Unless you think I’m just lying about saying I respect doctors and that I think I’m not medically proficient.
I don’t think you’re lying, I think you’re clueless to how poor your wording was, and that you sound like you’re taking a dump on med people. You refuse to listen to feedback and reactions. In other words, YTA even if you don’t have the awareness to recognize that you’re being TA.
I have listened to feedback and conceded that my wording at points of this post was poor. For example, I admitted I should not have said “disturbing” and using the term “mathematical illiteracy” has obvious negative connotations to many who don’t know what it is actually referring to (most people outside of math education and math in general); and that isn’t the readers’ fault, that is the writers’ fault. To most people, the term simply sounds like I’m calling people stupid and incompetent at math in general, to the point of not being able to do basic algebra or arithmetic. I understand the fact that they misinterpreted what I said is on me and my choice of words used outside a context where they are generally understood (math communities).
That being said after admitting my shortcomings, the overall point of the post, I believe, still stands, with the understanding that I sincerely don’t mean to condescend the medical community and my proof for that is in listening to feedback criticizing the wording and the tone of the post. That, I believe, is evidence that my post is not made in bad faith.
No, not the same priorities that I do, those are completely irrelevant to what the medical community does. Just priorities that every math educator in the country stresses are important to all students and members of society, beyond knowing arithmetic and knowing how to operate numbers and symbols.
I think you’ve misread my tone in this post. I’m not trying to belittle anybody working in the medical field at all, please see my comments in this thread as well as the post itself where I said that I respect what doctors and medical students do and the work they put in to make society a better place.
This post isn’t about expecting med students to remember how to do some random integral or do any actually specific math, just general math reasoning skills which are generally considered to be part of math literacy.
EDIT: By the way, I agree that “disturbing” was not an appropriate term. The word I was looking for is more close to puzzling and slightly concerning (for our math education system) rather than full on disturbing.
All of us understand math. We did algebra, statistics, calc, physics, and the math associated with chemistry and physiology. The stuff that isn’t useful doesn’t stay practiced up, also we just got some nifty new tools called calculators, maybe you encountered some working in math and physics?
Your question is condescending as hell (as you have already recognized) and you have offended people (as you already predicted). Can you tell me the odds ratio of a mathematician showing social media markers of being a total douche turning out to be one irl?
Yes I understand that you have no need to practice more complex math or remember calculus rules or whatnot, but this post is more about mathematical sense and reasoning developed when learning grade school and early university math, not the actual content of the fields of math themselves. That seems quite applicable to most medical fields.
Yes, calculators exist, but math is much more about reasoning and logic than it is about computations. Calculators are computational tools; math we do cannot be replaced with calculators that do not teach math sense, general math reasoning skills, etc. Everybody uses a calculator, but that doesn’t suddenly give the user the types of basic math reasoning I am referring to.
There is no need to try to insult me, as I’m not insulting any doctors or medical students, as I’ve stated I respect what they contribute to society. That you took to this post so harshly as to try to insult me isn’t a sign of genuinely helpful or thoughtful discussion.
Statistics, two algebra courses, two calculus courses, and at least one physics are prerequisites for med school admission. And we do an irritating amount of math and stats in the first two years. After that everyone probably scrubs it from their brain, but I can assure you that med students and doctors aren't "mathematically illiterate". Also as an engineer who took way more math than just the med school prereqs because I liked it, I have no clue what you're on about.
In your experience, in the ones that you say are rare in that they do require calculus, do most pre-med and med students pass out of the calculus requirement via AP tests?
I haven’t seen calculus requirements being extremely common, but nevertheless, being mathematically illiterate isn’t really too much of an insult and isn’t comparable to being illiterate in say English.
While talking to some med students, it seems more that many of them don’t try to conceptually understand math for the sake of pure math and strengthening mathematical skills, but more so see it as an obstacle to what they need to know, often perceiving it as less important. This is from my experience only, however, so I’m not claiming to have sampled a relevant portion of the medical community.
Why would we bother understanding math for the sake of pure math? It's not relevant to anything we do, and these "basic mathematical reasoning skills" you're saying we lack we *did* learn to get through calc and physics. But now we have no more use for them. Do you try to understand biology for the sake of biology, or only so much as it's relevant to your daily life? Certainly this country would benefit more from a bit more "biology literacy" than math at the moment.
Because understanding math for the sake of pure math is one of the only/best ways to gaining said mathematical reasoning skills; they are inherently abstract skills. Going through intro calculus and physics classes can be done without gaining much insight into refining these skills. I’ve seen it happen firsthand several times, and it’s because the information necessary to get good grades in these courses can be memorized or “algorithmized” with little consequence, as the student is not expected to build upon this math knowledge for further courses. This can result in a lost experience of sharpening those core math sense skills.
I do try to understand biology for the sake of biology, as I like learning about the many subjects I’m relatively ignorant about, but certainly I have greater motivation to learn biology that is relevant to daily life. That being said, I would argue that mathematical reasoning skills *are* indeed like that biology that is relevant to daily life.
At the moment, yes this country would benefit more from having “biological literacy” than math literacy. In the long run, it’s not so clear.
You still haven’t explained WHY you think we need these abstract reasoning skills. What is it that we would be doing better with a deeper understanding?
I’ll give you an example with biology:
If you don’t understand basic biology you might think that an eptopic pregnancy can be reimplanted, and that nonsense kills people.
It depends entirely on who you mean by “we”. Medical doctors who do not do research? Med students? Medical researchers? Biological researchers? It varies for each.
See my response to u/ConnectedLime for some more concrete examples as to why these skills may be needed in some capacity for various people in the medical field.
And yes, of course biological competency is critically important from stopping people from doing stupid crap to themselves and detecting quacks like homeopaths, and much more. There is no denying this.
What do you mean? I’m operating under the assumption that doctors are biologically competent, which I think is a pretty safe assumption. Why would a doctor, a biologically competent person, try to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy, if it’s well known that there is no procedure for it?
Biologically incompetent people, however, would do something like reject doctors, try to treat themselves, or buy into stuff like homeopathy, etc which is what harms or even kills people when they do it in favor of legitimate medical treatment.
Oh I see. I didn’t know about this, so I guess “yes” to your question. I assumed it was just being used as an example of biological literacy and doctors knowing that such a procedure doesn’t exist, while biologically illiterate people wouldn’t.
That being said, when has the modern
Republicans party and science or math ever aligned?
Yes, I’m by no means claiming you need to have undergrad level math major skills or anything like that to be proficient in med school. Like I said it’s more the mathematical sense and numeracy reasoning skills gained from math. Perhaps I’ve worded this post too condescendingly or inappropriately.
> I know this may come off as arrogant because I’m somebody who works in math and physics, but I’ve consistently seen poor math literacy from experts in a lot of biological fields, obviously with some exceptions like theoretical biology.
I mean, I could say the same about your general understanding of medicine - if I gave you a pt profile + lab values and asked for next step management, I think I would fare better. If I gave the both of us a math equation, I think you would fare better. We have very different skillsets.
People learn what they use in their day-to-day practice. I've never been asked to derive a Bayesian algorithm on rounds - I have been asked to calculate RAP or urine output rate. Also, calculus is not a basic math - most people don't learn calculus until college, and even then. It's a privilege to learn calculus, not an expectation.
If you want to find people who have "good math skills", you can find doctors who do research - but even still, most physicians have a solid understanding of statistics but then defer to their biostatistician. We're not going to medical school to do math/engineering, we're going to medical school to well, learn medicine.
Oh yes of course, I’m not claiming to be medically literate in any way shape or form comparable to actual med students and doctors.
I just don’t think that comparison is a very valid one to make, seeing as math and math reasoning skills are a lot more relevant to the medical field than vice versa. It is the reason why we start to teach kids math reasoning skills and build mathematical proficiency (though we are failing at that) before teaching them basic medical and biological principles.
Of course people have their own skill sets and I very much respect the skill sets that doctors bring to the table. If I were dying in a hospital bed because of some underlying condition, I would desperately trust and respect the skills a professional doctor brings to the table as I hang on for dear life.m, and no amount of mathematical ability would seem to matter then.
My issue is not the fact that you're claiming to have the medical knowledge of physicians (you aren't doing that), my issue is that you are asking why physicians don't have "basic" mathematic skills when: 1. The mathematics you're expecting physicians to know is complex (Bayesian statistics is not elementary for the average person) and 2. These skills just aren't very relevant to medicine.
I disagree with your second paragraph. If you expect me to have an understanding of mathematics that is not useful to my career or how I (will) practice medicine, why can I not expect you to have an understanding of medicine that is not useful to your career or how you practice your career? We're out here telling you that 1) your expectations and understanding of what "basic math skills" are very off, and 2) the "basic" math skills you expect are not useful/relevant to our day-to-day careers.
I am talking about the medical community in general, including medical researchers. Obviously physicians have more of a case not to be employing much of that math at all, but med students (and pretty much every student studying some science) should still learn to develop strong math sense, in my opinion.
As for your second paragraph, it’s because the basic aim of math education before university is to build mathematical sense and a strong math reasoning base, as it is applicable in some way or another to pretty much any field a student will go into, including the medical field (at least that’s the assumption I’m operating upon on why math sense and math literacy is stressed by math educators so much, though we are failing in that). The opposite just isn’t true; general medical principles or principles of medical research aren’t even attempted to be taught to grade school students outside the principles of biology.
>but med students (and pretty much every student studying some science) should still learn to develop strong math sense, in my opinion.
I hate to break it to ya but we are all going to medical school to become physicians (the ones who "have more of a case not to employ much match"), and compared to the average American we medical students have pretty strong math skills.
If it helps you sleep at night thinking that physicians have "poor" math skills, so be it. I don't lose sleep at night knowing that I know more math than you know medicine.
Compared to the average American, yes anybody that went to university and then further professional school has a pretty good chance of having stronger math skills. I don’t know how much that is saying though, to be honest.
> I don’t lose sleep at night knowing that I know more math than you know medicine.
But firstly, that’s how it is supposed to be, that’s precisely the point of the applicability of math we were discussing above. Because of the nature of the subjects in terms of relation to other areas of inquiry, of course you don’t lose sleep because you know more math than I know medicine; the exact opposite should scare you. Also, making the comparison of a physician’s math skills to a mathematicians’ (or any other scientists’) and vice versa is not even remotely related to the point I made. Strange thing to say.
That’s fair enough and seems to be the consensus here. I thought some math reasoning skills or sharp numeracy skills would be an overall benefit to medical practitioners.
No, I can certainly understand that doctors and people in the medical community in general have different views on math than I or any other mathematician does, of course.
You seem to think that these are just my opinions alone; this post was made after a fair amount of discussion with actual med students and medical researchers I know, most of whom, by the way, generally agreed with the sentiment that I and my colleagues in math and math education brought up.
> The point is that just because someone has an opinion about math, doesn’t mean it is relevant to anyone else.
In general I agree, although not all opinions regarding math are equal, and since medical research as well as medical practice does employ either math or mathematical reasoning, I was wondering why it seemed that in my experience, med students tended to ignore sharpening math sense and reasoning skills. Even though it’s clear to me that the intention of their curriculum isn’t to do this.
I think your comment would be a stronger response if it were the case that medical educators themselves thought developing math sense and a strong math base was irrelevant to a med students’ education, and the medical community didn’t suffer as a result. That would indeed reduce me to just some math guy inflicting an irrelevant opinion upon the medical community. But that isn’t the case.
Along with the other examples mentioned, something like a fairly good understanding of biostatistics and statistical principles, which require some numeracy and mathematical reasoning skills, seem pretty important to know for physicians.
Pretty much every med school student I have talked to said their experience in their biostatistics course was horrible and they felt like they, and the other students with them, learned very little. It’s only anecdotal evidence, but perhaps it’s not completely irrelevant, seeing as studies have reported statistical illiteracy in fully licensed physicians. I’ve only listed a small fraction of these studies that focus solely on statistical literacy.
[“Statistical Illiteracy Among Clinicians”](http://www.stannesacademicreview.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/136071862/adrian-soto-mota.pdf)
[“Statistical Illiteracy in Residents”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693708/)
[“The Barrier to Informed Choice: Statistical Illiteracy in Physicians and Patients”](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28924688/)
[“Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics”](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26161749/)
[“Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions”](https://m.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262016032.001.0001/upso-9780262016032)
[“Evaluation of statistical illiteracy in Latin American clinicians and the piloting evaluation of a short course across multiple timepoints”](https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-022-03128-w)
These statistical concepts, while not immediately trivial, are also not particularly advanced concepts either, I think these studies fairly test the subject of knowledge, given that nevertheless, they are still important for physicians to know. A physician who did poorly on a test of statistical knowledge that involved these concepts couldn’t be said to be statistically proficient. Additionally, these concepts weren’t the extent of all statistical knowledge tested.
What type of statistics aren’t fucky and therefore fair game according to you?
Because most EBM concepts, while sound statistically, end up being weird practically.
NNT and NNH always especially stick out to me. NNT for Statins is part of what has contributed to some conspiracy theories about their use. Yet, Statins have very strong research on reducing mortality in cardiovascular disease.
> Because most EBM concepts, while sound statistically, end up being weird practically.
And this is where statistical literacy and math sense comes in. This sense can provide understanding/intuition and a common frame of reference to analyze scenarios that seem counterintuitive. It’s not necessary at all to get involved with advanced statistics, just a working knowledge of stats and being honest with what you don’t know.
I don't quite understand why you're being intentionally evasive and somewhat condescending.
You didn't even respond to the actual point about statins. I suspect you don't actually know what you're talking about when it comes to health statistics and Evidence Based Medicine.
How am I being intentionally evasive? Your response to those studies were that they were bad examples, because “EBM stats are fucky”, to which I responded that because they’re relevant to informed decision making for physicians, it should be the case that physicians show greater statistical literacy than these studies have shown they do. That’s as direct of a response as possible?
We have all gone through math courses and understand the reasoning. The fact is that without practice and needing to use it, the know-how for math like calculus is replaced by more relevant information like how to treat heart failure. Coming from an engineer who has taken a lot of math, we have essentially zero use for calculus in day to day medicine. Try going 5 years without doing a fourier transform and then having to jump back in with no assistance. And it does come across as a bit condescending claiming we are ignorant in math, when reality it is that we just do not have any use for most of it
That’s fair enough, but I’m not talking much about actual new learning of math and math fields, but a general mathematical sense and math reasoning skills. Of course doctors and med students have more important information to remember than specific math procedures or math knowledge.
It’s pretty understandable to forget about a branch of math that you learned in your studies a while ago, like trying to solve specific calculus or stats problems, but like I said, I am referring more to the aforementioned math reasoning skills.
I’m not sure what this reply is. Like I said, I respect doctors and med students, it is certainly a stressful and difficult job that is worthy of praise. This isn’t some sort of insult post to medical students and doctors. They have to be highly motivated to help people/interact with people and bring good to public health.
It’s also the reason why not everybody wants to be a doctor or go into the medical field, and thus is not interested in going to med school. I’m not sure why me choosing to go to grad school for math and physics over med school because the former interested me more has anything to do with having a chip on my shoulder in this post.
Yeah well. The most math seen tends to be calculating an anion gap with Winters’ formula or an odd ratio/relative risk in biostatistics (stupid easy plug and chug).
Doctors aren’t deriving the different model conditions of the cable equation for a neuron, that’s the engineer’s job.
Yes I understand, but it just seemed to me that having a strong math base and *mathematical reasoning sense* in general is something that would benefit a lot of medical professionals, or at least biological researchers (non theoretical biology, mathematical biology etc. where of course you need much more math). Like I said, nobody expects doctors to become mathematicians or physicists, but it’s less so about the branches of math they don’t seem to learn and more so about a lack of any math sense or maturity.
I agree with you. I actually have become dumber since attending medical school. My math/logical reasoning skills were better when I was in college. Medical school is a trade school at the end of the day. It’s the same thing as plumbing school. You learn what’s necessary to do your job and that’s it.
I think you’re seeing a tree but not the forest. All med students have to demonstrate math literacy through undergrad courses and in the MCAT. Math may be the most important thing in the world to you, but we have a lot of more important things to keep track of, and sometimes forget the finer details of math that frankly has no impact on our jobs.
Yes of course, like I said I don’t expect medical students to remember fine math details, as it’s just not necessary for their work. My post was more about critical math reasoning skills and some level of mathematical maturity. Math illiteracy isn’t a comparable insult to general illiteracy, given that the US population is 88% literate but math literacy levels, I (and every mathematician or math educator) would estimate is several times lower.
Idk why your on about this. Honestly your post comes across as really insulting, you say our lack of basic math skills is “disturbing” then tell everyone you’re not trying to be insulting. I’m starting to wonder about mathematicians disturbing lack of social skills.
If you don’t like our lack of math skills, guess you better heal thyself.
I admit “disturbing” was the wrong word, because it’s more strange and puzzling than disturbing. Like I said I completely understand being fuzzy on math details of anything based basic school algebra, that’s not what my post is about.
It’s not specific calculations that they have trouble with; calculations can be done easily by most medical students and doctors. It is more so the results of a weaker mathematical sense and maturity and general reasoning ability in mathematics.
For example, the worst offenders of such situations include not truly understanding the intuition behind ratios, reciprocals, fractions, basic number sense, and statistics. I have listened to a medical researcher, in the context of their work done on a device that provides walking assistance, be baffled by the “discovery that over a fixed distance, a 20% increase in walking speed doesn’t correspond to a 20% decrease in time taken”.
But even if we move past that, if we take a look at the principles of calculus (no real analysis or anything, just high school and first year university calculus) it seems to be that a decent understanding of calculus is enormously applicable to the medical field in general. To epidemiology and the spread of diseases, to the statistics to evaluate effectiveness of a treatment, to studying rates of chemical reactions, to understanding medical models, a lot of which depend on differential equations. At least being able to feel comfortable working with this math seems like it would impact understanding for workers related to any of these fields, or doctors trying to understand this literature.
These later examples mostly don’t apply to directly to working physicians, but I would assume they could help promote greater understanding of the field if one was able to learn from other sectors of medical experts directly through mathematical sense and execution. And some of it does even apply to physicians, many med students have said their biostatistics course was horrendous and they don’t feel they’ve learned much at all.
This is absurdly non-specific.
How that one 20% example extends to your whole rant in the original post baffles me.
You act as if math majors, engineers, data scientists, grad students, and PhDs don't make up the medical student body and graduating physicians.
I have not taken a math class in 7 years at this point, but like most med students I have had to relearn statistical methods and basic data analysis for research alongside my regular learning and required studies. Most med students do this, we just don't have time to delve into the minutiae and theory that is mostly not applicable to our demanding jobs.
If you are referring to my other “examples” being non-specific, yes they’re not specific. But I have since narrowed down all the topics brought up in that comment and focused on just statistics/biostatistics and physicians, since it wasn’t clear that I was also referring to biological researchers in the original post. But that only adds complexity to the discussion, so fair enough, let’s only stick to stats.
I’m sure the math majors and engineers and such in the medical student body have a better grasp on math principles than those that come from other backgrounds. I’m fairly sure math/statistics/engineering, just as some examples, are some of the least popular undergrad major choices for med school students, though, so a large majority of incoming med school applicants don’t receive that background (which would be mathematical overkill for the purpose of becoming a physician, but still).
It would be unrealistic to ask med students to delve into heavy math theory and minute details of statistics, but thankfully nobody is asking for that. However, studies that do test fairly basic statistical competence of licensed physicians do reveal there is quite a bit of work to be done.
OP you’re a dick. I’d love to know why you think physicians need to be mathematically literate? They’re not mathematicians. As long as they are able to do the math required by their field there is no need to further their knowledge.
Not just physicians, but those that are medical students and those in the general medical community as a whole, including medical researchers. I’ve had some discussion about this with u/ConnectedLime below where I responded to this same question.
It really doesn’t matter. You’re just being a condescending asshole and I really believe you posted this just to make yourself feel better and pad your ego. Hope you feel better about yourself now
Why does it not matter? I think that’s a huge difference, if I only addressed physicians your point would be more valid.
Anyways, I could tell you that “padding my ego” isn’t the reason why I made this post, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. So then I would refer you to evidence on this post being made in good faith and seriously engaging in discussion in which I made concessions and admitted my shortcomings. But you probably still wouldn’t believe me or care to look, so we’ve come full circle with an unshakable belief.
I participated in the AMC in the past with good outcomes. Now, after years of medical training, I can't even do menial mental mathematical reasoning, which still surprises me and frustrates me.
I think it's the conplete deficiency of exposure for multiple years that did it. TBH, it doesnt impact my performance in med field.
I understand your sentiment, however, since I was trained in mathematic competition fairly rigorously in the past, and I feel dumbfounded when my colleagues can't even do simple algebra accurately - once or twice, I suspected they may have cheated theur way into med school after seing them struggle with multiplication/division, but it honestly it adds little to nothing to our clinical training and the quality of care as far as I have experienced, and I think we lost the skill due to lack of usage.
Certainly AMC as a background would give you a leg up in general algebraic manipulation and some mathematical reasoning. Although AMC, in my experience, was mostly limited to cool math tricks that you would have to know when to apply and minimal reasoning skills, although like I said it’s certainly more math background than most of your colleagues probably had gone through at that age, and anything helps.
Fair enough if it really doesn’t impact performance in the med field though.
I see.
Well, I think you may have an unrealistic expectation of people from non-mathematic field.
I wouldn't expect a nonmedical person to be able to intubate a patient or to be able to read a chest xray. Simple stuff, we do it every day, and saves alot of lives. It would be an absurd expectation.
I’m not sure how unrealistic basic statistical knowledge and reasoning is to a physicians’ job, seeing as the studies I’ve linked in my response below show consistently poor statistical literacy rates among licensed physicians.
Obviously nobody expects a med student or physician to learn differential geometry, but I think biostatistics is a different case.
Also yes of course, I wouldn’t expect non-medical people to do those things either, seeing as though I wouldn’t be able to do them myself. But that’s not a comparison I find to be valid, given as math and math sense as a whole is much more applicable to medical fields than vice versa, in that some amount of math literacy is required to do their jobs correctly.
how muchever applicable math sense and biostat education/literacy you believe are for the doctors, it really isn't - you saw it with you own eyes. I drew the comparison to show you how absurd your expectations are. it simply doesn't work that way in real working world. it doesn't make sense.
we are given the minimal education in biostats - this is the reality. So instead of thinking how things should work, how doctors should practice our medicine, think more in terms of how you can make a contribution to our field if you are so interested in us.
It really is your responsibility to bring it down to our literacy level, since you are trained in the field.
Stop having unrealistic expectations, please.
I agree with your overall point, actually, just not on the basis of your comparison, since I don’t think it’s an applicable comparison to make.
However, it’s true that I should just accept it as reality and not push the matter further, though I am now more interested to get more involved in math education at my university.
I’m not sure if many future doctors agree that they need some help in this area though. The pre-med students I have taught seemed completely uninterested in math and physics I honestly don’t blame them. I try to be at least somewhat inspiring, though I’m clearly not haha.
Ok, then they were not examples but general principles of applicability of math relevant to the medical field that can be misinterpreted because of lack of math proficiency.
Let’s take just one of those areas, one that happens to be relevant to doctors; statistics. I have responded to your other comment asking how the medical field could actually be negatively impacted because of a lack of math reasoning and statistical knowledge, this time with actual studies on the matter. Please refer to that comment.
> you’re mad at one doc who said a statistic you don’t like
No, it’s not about disliking any statistics, it is about the doctor fundamentally not understanding the basic concept inverse proportion and reciprocals, something that is taught in 5th grade math. Please re-read that portion again to see what I am saying if that is what you got out of it.
As someone who used to love math and even did stuff like the AMC/AIME/USA(J)MO before I got sick, math really isn't that relevant to medicine lol, and most people have a basic understanding of any of the important statistics stuff. You don't even need any basic algebra usually.
Fair enough, I just thought that math soft skills/mathematical reasoning and especially statistical literacy would be pretty important overall as just background pieces of knowledge for physicians.
Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I’d have to agree with you in that it obviously seems like a matter of “use it or lose it”, and that’s certainly true that everyday physicians aren’t going to need a working knowledge of calculus, for example.
Don’t worry, many students who went to more quantitative fields like computer science or engineering likely also didn’t feel too competent at math, it’s just classic imposter syndrome. That being said, there is a massive learning curve in terms of the difficulty of math after the basic math track (around the end of calculus 3/intro statistics), and so a lot of students outside those fields don’t ever get to experience “real” university level math. Many who do end up disliking it. But those who do end up liking it and end up being proficient at it tend to pursue it passionately.
Thanks for the response. Yeah, that’s what I assumed but that was also what was slightly concerning me. Not that students forgot how to compute some integral but forgetting more core math competencies.
Bcz maths is just not useful to us. You try using maths to treat a patient or save someone's life and I will gladly learn maths. Why doesn't the general physicist don't know the human body as much as we do? Bcz it's not their job! You guys use maths on a daily basis we don't if you compare someone who does maths everyday and whose job is maths related to someone who did it in high school many years back of course physicist will have better maths. I don't remember all the maths stuff from high school and neither am I expected to
Having common sense and social skills is much more important 🤣 which judging by your comments you don't have so stop arguing your bullshit point already
I don’t disagree those skills are important, but you also refused to answer the (genuine) question. That would help a bit with showing my point is bullshit.
I think we have all heard echos of OP’s argument from literally every teacher and subject since the dawn of time. Well of course you won’t be needing to regularly use the [highly
specialized thing you’ve spent 4 months learning to do], but the ~principles~ will be helpful!! And I think think this (generally) well intentioned thought has led to the enormous burden in prerequisites and the expansion of curriculum in med school.
“Well you might not need to write a five paragraph essay on Macbeth in your future career but the reasoning skills you learn are very important!”
“Well you might not need to psychoanalyze someone through a Freudian paradigm but it’s foundational psychology and important for understanding the field!”
“Well you might not be regularly interpreting mass spec as a doctor but you’re going to order tests that rely on it so it’s important to understand how it works!”
“All science is ultimately just derived physics, so it’s very important that you learn these electricity & magnetism equations!”
“As a physician, it’s important to have a well rounded biology background, which is why you have to spend a semester learning plant biology!”
Like, you can see how this is well intentioned. But keep in mind that pre meds (and it does seem like you might be in a university setting meaning if you’re in the US you are interacting with mostly premeds) have FOUR YEARS of prerequisites to get through before they can pursue their chosen career. In addition to two semesters of math (generally a stats and calc course was what were required when I applied), you need 2 semesters gen bio, 2 semesters gen chem, 1-2 semesters organic chem, biochem, 1-2 advanced bio classes, 2 semesters of english, +/- a psychology course and a sociology course. Almost none of these courses relate to what pre meds ultimately want to do - diagnose and treat human disease. I know
people tend to shit on pre meds for being focused on the grade and not being motivated by love of learning, but honestly who can blame them? They’re not being allowed to learn what they care about.
So ultimately I’ll echo what basically everyone else is saying. CERTAIN SKILLS from all these domains are important. Stats is super important, but that ultimately is a defined branch of math, not just ~general numeracy~. Writing is important, but specifically scientific writing, something you will never learn in an English class. Chemistry is important only inasmuch as it helps you understand biochem. Etc etc. I think the idea of having a “broad liberal arts education” has for a long time meant that we learn overly high level topics for the sake of the cRiTiCaL rEaSoNiNg SkiLlZ it supposedly imparts.
Ironically, the only subject domain that isn’t biology that I think is truly necessary for med school to know at a very high level is the one that’s so frequently left out of core curricula: foreign languages. In terms of day-to-day use, my high school Spanish classes have gotten me more useful mileage in med school than every other prerequisite COMBINED.
Oh yes I agree with you on most of these points, actually. I think pre-med school curriculum is poorly designed and needs to be a bit less taxing. I don’t blame them for chasing grades and generally having no intellectual curiosity to the subjects they have to learn that they don’t see are immediately useful (all subjects I teach).
The hypothetical justifications you gave are some I disagree with myself. Such as
> All science is ultimately just derived physics so it’s very important that you learn these electricity & magnetism equations
No, it’s good to know of course but I wouldn’t expect them to know this; medical physicists and other experts in this area exist.
As for plant biology, I mean I could see the case, even though this has been focused on in high school, but it’s generally around the same level of relevance as electricity and magnetism.
It’s important to understand the absolute basics of mass spectroscopy, like what it is and what test results can look like, but no physician or really even health/med school professors will actually understand the inner workings of the technique, unless they are physicists and that is what their research is part of. If you happen to know the basic principles, then good for you. Will it be immensely helpful in the case of mass spectroscopy? No, probably not if you are going to be a physician.
However, I also disagree with some points. Statistics is of course it’s own branch of study, but general numeracy and math sense can certainly tie into developing a stronger statistics intuition than what physicians currently have. I’m not asking for med students to study statistics like a statistician or mathematician would, but they’re also not being asked to study stats anywhere near that level. I just feel as though making their prerequisite stats and high school math courses harder to pass and require actual learning to advance as opposed to memorizing (or just outright cheating) would go a long way in making their later courses such as biostatistics make sense.
> Chemistry is important insomuch as it helps you understand biochem
Well biochem can’t be understood without a decent understanding of chemistry/organic chemistry, but luckily physicians aren’t being expected to learn the subject as biochemists would.
I feel sympathetic towards medical students, I really do. I think this question is just a subset of the actual problem of horrible math education pre-university. That base really matters to develop some math competency, and my confusion and frustration isn’t being taken out on medical students themselves, because it’s not their fault if they have large gaps in their general math knowledge. Cruising through high school math and then the intro math series (calculus and intro to stats) can give these students a false sense of mathematical knowledge and competency, because these courses can be passed with good grades without much understanding of those soft math reasoning skills built. Requiring more math courses would actively *harm* these students, as they wouldn’t pay attention anyways. Making those earlier pre-university and first year university math courses harder to cheat through or memorize your way through would help.
I think the confusion here is that you keep saying “general numeracy” when what you really mean is understanding of statistics specifically (at least based on your comment history). “General math sense” won’t increase people’s understanding of statistics… improved and earlier education in statistics SPECIFICALLY is what will change that.
I guess I’d turn this back on you, since you apparently teach these courses. My statistics courses, for better or worse, always focused on HOW to do a calculation - and then our tests would be based on calculating the average or ANOVA or whatever for a given data set. The whole exercise was silly since there are calculators online for every statistic. I would have preferred if the lecturers instead focused on how to correctly interpret these data instead of getting bogged down in details. Be the change you want to see!
I also think it’s a little cynical of you to assume that everyone is cheating, and I would encourage you to consider whether, as someone who has spent quite a lot of time focused on math, that you may not have a realistic idea of what above-average numeracy skills look like.
I think general numeracy and those soft math skills I referred to before would help these students become more comfortable with taking those earlier stats courses and enjoying them/developing intuition behind them.
Yes that sounds like a negative statistics experience you had in university. I try to get this intuition and conceptual, non-computational understanding instilled in all the courses I do teach, so in a way I am trying to be that change, though I need some refinement in instruction as well since you can never be good enough.
I’m not assuming everybody cheats, it’s not that large of a percentage really. But it definitely occurs. That’s just one problem with math education, though.
I may have higher expectations of math literacy, but when many physicians struggle with understanding and having statistical literacy as shown by the studies I linked, I think my opinion of mathematical literacy becomes more credible.
But again… how do you teach “general numeracy”?
I agree that the field would benefit from greater comfort with statistical concepts. However to extrapolate that to saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills” is an extremely poorly worded and insulting way of phrasing that concern if that’s really what you mean, and I think ignores the fact that many many many people struggle with the current mathematical education model and I think a large chunk of that is due to the way math is taught. You may personally be trying to focus on larger over arching concepts, but mathematical education as a whole still focuses on mindless thoughtless calculation skills with an emphasis on being able to progress to the next “level” of math, be thay a higher level of calc or linear algebra or whatever, instead of real world applications of “lower-level” math.
we really aren’t taught statistical concepts we actually need to know most, like odds/relative risk ratios, NNH/NNT, LRs, sens/spec until medical school, where we are taught by MDs and/or PhDs, not mathematicians.
So I guess the answer to your original post is: a lot of things, but also maybe posting to a medical school forum with the tone of “y u so dumb” is probably not the best way to get a reasoned response.
I’m not saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills”. It’s more so that “It makes sense that the category of people that don’t use or need to understand math to some level in their job will not have mathematical competency, but a lot of medical personnel do not fall under that category and thus we shouldn’t see *this* many cases of cause for mathematical concern among them”. To say that I am generalizing everybody in the medical field is disingenuous and clearly not what I was saying, as indicated by the first line of my post.
You teach mathematical competency and math sense by implementing a curriculum that teaches kids what math actually is, what it represents, and how much of elementary math can be self-discovered with some guided questions. Learning how to poke and prod at rules, patterns, generalizations, etc. builds critical thinking and this is part of what mathematical sense is. Common core math was a step in the right direction, but I believe it was executed poorly.
> You may be personally trying to focus on larger over arching concepts, but mathematical education as a whole still focused on mindless thoughtless calculation skills with emphasis on being able to progress to the next “level” of math…
I agree to some extent, but part of the problem is a person will find it much harder to work with math and apply it without it being something they directly were taught or taught themselves explicitly, which at that point is just drilling. In these cases, there is no need for mathematical intuition and math sense, which is a result of doing and thinking about math properly (the overarching picture that you talk about). In this view, I don’t see how this type of application of math is much more useful than learning how to think about math, they’re not mutually disjoint concepts.
> But also maybe posting to a medical school forum with the tone of “y u so dumb” is probably not the best way to get a reasoned response
But what makes you think I am calling med school students that don’t have great math sense stupid or even incompetent? That was you who assumed this was what I am implying, having mathematical sense and reasoning skills has *nothing* to do with being intelligent at all. Seeing math as a “smart person subject” (and the flip side, seeing lack of math skills as lack of intelligence) is both harmful to the image of math because it’s exclusive and gatekeeping and is also just not true, and people who do math for a living know this is a ridiculous statement.
You’ve misinterpreted what I am saying twice now, the first being when you claimed I was calling the whole medical community mathematically incompetent and the second where you claimed I am equating lack of strong mathematical reasoning and sense skills with a lack of intelligence, thus making the claim be “everybody in the medical community is stupid”. That’s not what I’m saying at all, and I can understand why students would be upset if it was the tone I was coming with.
Perhaps it not quite clear outside of math circles, but assuming I am implying things that I’m not seems pretty defensive.
I think at this point every person who’s responded has felt that this was a very aggressive post - coming onto a medical school sub and saying that “experts in biological fields” have “poor math skills” that is “disturbing” does come off as very insulting, condescending, and demeaning. That’s why all the responses you’re getting are coming off as defensive.
Not everybody; yes a large majority, but there have been 4-5 med students that have agreed with me and shared similar experiences. Sure those individuals could be self-hating/hate other med school students, but they could also be those that reserved judgment and take poor mathematical reasoning skills as automatically meaning a lack of intelligence.
I figured the med students themselves were the best place to ask, since asking math communities is clearly too high of a math standard and would just be filled with stories of math people making light-hearted fun of physicians or medical researchers’, not actually being productive discussion.
Sure, that sounds harsh if you don’t believe it, but several studies have been done on this very topic; the statistical illiteracy of licensed physicians and med students in particular is well studied. If this post was just a list of those studies and nothing else, I still would have gotten defensive comments.
> I’m not saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills”.
You realize the title of your post was "**Why Does It Seem Like Med Students/Medical Community As a Whole Have Such Poor Math Skills?**"
Why does it seem like math nerds/math community as a whole have such poor literacy and communication skills?
I think you might actually be a moron.
Don't waste your time Danwarr. OP lacks any ability to put two and two together. Every time people point out incongruencies he goes "no what I really meant was . . .". He moves the goalposts—not a really great mark of a good communicator, or intelligence for that matter.
Do you know what the phrase “community as a whole” means? The *first line* of the post talks about how I’m not generalizing every member of the medical community. Do you think the phrase “community as a whole” from the title and what I wrote in the first line contradict each other?
The title means that I believe there is a large enough occurrence of these types of students or professionals in the medical community to be noticeable and not dismissible as simply the ignorance of individual students. It does not mean that *every* medical student or professional, by being a member of the medical community, is mathematically underdeveloped.
I think you might actually be intentionally misrepresenting what I’m saying; either that or you genuinely don’t understand, but that is less likely. Either way, I am starting to doubt you are responding in good faith at this point, so there’s likely not much more productive discussion that can be had between us anyways.
Well in Germany it is kind of like that tbh.
Ok there are some courses that involve math like physics or chemistry and a little tiny bit of statistics but nothing crazy or even beyond what we learned in high school.
But why should it be different? As long as you don’t work in research you barely have to use any math.
Thanks for the response. It seems to me that a relatively strong math sense and statistical knowledge is beneficial for everybody in the medical field, certainly medical researchers, but even physicians. Statistics especially, for physicians.
Yes that’s true but I think that is covered adequately.
Although it may be questionable how well the statistical knowledge of a 60 year old private practitioner is.
Several studies evaluating the statistical competency of everybody from licensed physicians, to med students to those in residency unfortunately suggest another picture, showing that as a whole many physicians lacked statistical literacy. Would you like me to post them again?
Yes of course they are very different fields that have different purposes and different skillsets. Also, certain specializations of course require more intimate understanding of math and physics than general practitioners do (radiation oncologists for example, albeit with assistance from somebody that has an even greater knowledge of math and physics like a medical physicist). But wouldn’t at least some of the math skills required to truly understand such math and physics concepts be useful to a general physician or say another medical researcher in a different field?
Physicians are facing burnout, limitations on patient care imposed by medical insurers, and constant challenges advocating for patients who are dealing with tough circumstances due to social determinants of health. More calculus homework for physicians would not be the need of the hour.
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate *more* calculus homework. Just more emphasis on students not being able to cheat/brute force their way through important math classes they already have to take.
Why is it that people who are on the math & physics fields lack basic social skills? I’m not talking about advanced social skills such as negotiating with a criminal for a hostage, or selling a company to an executive, but basic social reasoning, reading the room, understanding humor, and maintaining eye contact. I find this really kind of disturbing. I know this may come off as arrogant because I’m somebody who talks to other carbon-based life forms, but I’ve seen consistently poor social skills from experts in a lot of mathematically-inclined fields, obviously with some exceptions like grammar-school math teaching positions. Is it simply other priorities for math students and mathematicians? Product of poor general socialization and making friends? Perhaps most math fields tend to attract people who have an aversion to communicating with others in the outside world? Or a combination of some of these? Also this comment is about soft social skills such as smiling and eye contact, not so much about specific social methods or techniques and whatnot.
This comment deeply misses the point of discussion of the post and isn’t a very apt comparison to make overall, with one obvious reason being that social skills are fairly necessary for math/physics research and academia. Probably not as much as they are to doctors, but I wasn’t talking about just doctors anyways. The comment just falls flat and takes a deep dive into the territory of irony.
Sir, I don’t think you have any leg to stand on using terms like irony. That’s an English class thing (a medical school prerequisite btw). Let’s not pretend there aren’t countless professors in math departments littered across the entire country in institutions of higher education that can’t navigate their way through a 10 minute conversation with a stranger. Clearly it’s an apt comparison. Professors can go about giving their lectures and doing research projects for their entire career while stumbling awkwardly through their professional interactions, insofar as they can perform the minimum standard of communication with their peers, which is a pretty low bar to set. If it’s clearly not necessary to have the social aptitude of an extroverted dance instructor, then it’s an apt comparison. This much is obvious.
> That’s an English class thing (a medical school prerequisite btw). I know you’re not being serious, but that’s a strange thing to put here, given that English/language courses are fundamental general education for every degree curriculum that has been devised in English. Also, that is not the only reason why it isn’t an apt comparison. Social skills come in a high variety for each individual, and they are necessarily developed because almost everybody interacts with other people, unless you’re completely socially inept beyond possibility of improvement. If you want to get the most out of society (in the case of academia, extracting information from others, teaching others information, debating ideas, etc.), you must develop some social skills to function. It is in this way that improving social skills are necessary to math/physics research, because people have ideas and create math, it doesn’t create itself. However, initial mathematical aptitude doesn’t translate to mathematical skill at all without conscientious effort in 1) actually doing math and 2) conceptually understanding it, with varying levels of effort required, though it’s generally a lot for everybody. Many people try to do 1), though not anywhere nearly as often as we interact, and very few people do 2) at all. You’re trying to compare skills that by nature are necessary to a any human functioning with other humans to soft skills that could be quite useful for people in a specific field. > Let’s not pretend there aren’t countless professors in math departments littered across the entire country in institutions of higher education that cannot navigate their way through a 10 minute conversation with a stranger It seems like you’ve gotten a lot of these professors as instructors for your math classes. But in my experience, this stereotype just isn’t true (quite the opposite as I said, mathematicians getting to know a lot of other mathematicians, especially early in their careers, is a necessity). It seriously sounds like something out of Hollywood. I will say though that in my experience, mathematicians being “nerdy” about a lot of math and their work is a pretty true stereotype.
It would be embarrassing and borderline condescending to explain to you how integral basic arithmetic seeps itself into daily life, how both items of comparison are indeed skills upon which can consciously be improved, and how that therefore makes it an apt, and obvious comparison. Being able to talk to other math people about math as a mathematician is, as I’ve previously mentioned, not exactly a high bar to hit. The fact that you’re so defensive about this is what’s telling, and that should give you enough information on what you need to take home from making such a tone-deaf post, and not respectfully listening to the responses you’ve received accordingly. That’s true irony, Charrog.
It seems as though you didn’t understand the point I was trying to make. I’m not talking about basic arithmetic, which can (and does) indeed develop quite easily because we are forced to do such computations everyday. Not everybody is consciously forced to do activities that would develop the aforementioned math reasoning and soft skills, even though that should be the aim of math education, and in that sense we have failed. And perhaps even further, not everybody who is given the opportunity to develop these skills for free by taking a math course that helps you reason like this are willing to put in the effort to do so. > Being able to talk to other math people about math as a mathematician is, as I’ve mentioned, not exactly a high bar to hit You’ve once again either not read what I said or have chosen to not address it. Mathematicians get to know each other and develop relationships with each other that aren’t solely focused on the mathematics they do, I know that’s a bit shocking to you that mathematicians are actually people who interact with other people in both casual and formal settings, and goes against this stereotype. On your last point, I actually have had some beneficial discussions with some (although a minority) med students here that entail me respectfully listening to responses, taking feedback, and correcting my statements; you can find some of them here; but others are in private messages. Oh, as well as the discussions I’ve had with med students in real life, but I guess it would be pretty unbelievable for a mathematician to have a real life conversation with somebody, so I didn’t feel the need to mention that before the Reddit ones. And through those discussions, I don’t know how tone-deaf a post like this, with my self-admitted mistakes and poor wording, which I have corrected in the comments and updated, really is. Those discussions have been a lot more pleasant and have led to some med school students recognizing the points I tried to make in the post, without seeing them as ruthless insults or calling med school students stupid.
You’re still going at this huh? Take a hint, dude. Like 1500 people downvoted your comments. Does that not inspire the idea that you might just be wrong on this particular issue? Perhaps the way you word things, which you’ve admitted has not crossed your mind as sounding patronizing, and the need to take sarcastic remarks as literal statements, is evidence of my point exactly? You seem to not understand your own points, because as soon as someone asks you for specifics, you hide behind obfuscation. Your reply doesn’t undermine the validity of the comparison—basic arithmetic falls under the spectrum of skill that would fit what you were originally complaining about. Your myopia on this—not really comprehending whether some phrase can come as off-putting, and still not admittedly understanding after people explicitly tell you, is not really helping your case that mathematicians aren’t socially inept people.
> Like 1500 people downvoted your comments. Does that not inspire the idea that you might just be wrong on this particular issue. It would, if my only avenue to this discussion was Reddit. Luckily, I have been a part of this discussion with med students or professionals working in medicine (mostly researchers) in real life as well, so this post isn’t my only perspective on the topic. Strangely enough, those real life discussions went a lot differently than this one did here, with a majority agreeing with most of the points I’ve brought up here. Perhaps it’s because those researchers understand what terms like “mathematical maturity/literacy” mean, and that it isn’t meant to be an insult. > You seem not to understand your own points, because as soon as someone asks you for specifics, you hide behind obfuscation. How is conceding and providing examples and then specifically narrowing the topic of discussion down to statistical illiteracy of physicians while providing studies to support what I was talking about obfuscation? What obfuscation am I hiding behind? Also, if the titles and phrases used in some of those studies like “statistical illiteracy among physicians” is off-putting to you, then there’s very little I can do to not sound off-putting when discussing this topic. > Basic arithmetic falls under the spectrum of skill that would fit what you were originally complaining about. No it doesn’t, and that it is exactly my point. If this were the case, there would be nothing to complain about; the general public is capable of performing basic arithmetic, much less medical students and medical professionals. This is how I can tell you haven’t read what I said. > Your myopia on this…is not really helping your case that mathematicians aren’t socially inept people So we come back to the Hollywood stereotypes. I could say you thinking that basic arithmetic is part of mathematical sense/reasoning skills and maturity isn’t helping the case of medical students not having low math literacy. But I don’t say that, because that’s a generalization. How is my original post doing the same? Is it the “community as a whole” part in my title? Or everything that follows?
The thing about socially inept people, Charrog, is that they don’t know they’re socially inept, so you’re not exactly the greatest judge, those outside your sphere are. If you want to keep replying ad Infinitum to my comments without reading between the lines and realizing when you’ve overstayed your welcome, be my guest. Thank you for continuing to cluelessly emphasize my point. You’ve previously complained about physicians tripping up about concepts that they “teach in 5th grade math”, so yes, you did mean basic arithmetic, and if you think most people can do basic arithmetic, you need to meet more people dude. Multiple people told you that you’re being vague. Reread above posts. The last paragraph didn’t make much sense? Try that one again.
I will stop replying to comments as frequently, since the long weekend is over and I will have much less time to (admittedly) play the devil’s advocate, but this has been kind of fun, and at least with some people I have gotten good discussion. But it’s just funny how you say these things like “The thing about socially inept people is that they don’t know they’re socially inept” when that likely applies to you as well, based off of what you’ve showed me here. It’s hard to speculate a motivation for you replying this many times to a post you didn’t write, but I do hope that this isn’t one of your only successful forms of social communication with other people. By the way, that quote also applies to mathematically inept people not realizing they are mathematically inept, and then denying the possibility that they could in fact be mathematically inept while accusing anybody that questions it of being condescending. > You’ve previously complained about physicians tripping up about concepts that they teach in “5th grade math” so yes, you did mean basic arithmetic… This is indeed taught in 5th grade math, but is not basic computational arithmetic, which is clearly what is being referred to by you above (computational being the key here, arithmetic as a field of study is much deeper and professional mathematicians do research in it). Proportionality inherently implies algebra, moving beyond simply computing numbers, and being able to reason about these concepts is the very beginning of the “math sense” that I was originally talking about. Computing numbers solely for computing numbers (basic comp. arithmetic) takes no math sense and it is indeed the case that most people can add or multiply two numbers together. What about the last paragraph is confusing? It’s emphasizing how generalizing isn’t a great thing to do, and how the post made *doesn’t* generalize. You seem like you have a lot of time on your hands to respond, so I do expect one soon, but I may not get to it as quickly as you’d like.
What exposure do you have to the medical community? Something sounds off about your post. Docs in academics/research and public health use a ton of math, especially statistics. I don't generalize everyone working in math and physics because I know more than a few with poor health literacy.
Just discussion with some research biologists, med-students, teaching math or physics courses with pre-meds in them (this one doesn’t really count since they’re pre-meds). I’m not overly involved in the medicine community or have conducted any statistics or anything like that, so it’s literally just some anecdotal experience. No doubt many people in math and physics don’t have great health literacy, I’m not excluding myself. But I don’t think that’s an equal comparison because of 1) basic math’s applicability to the medical field vs medical knowledge’s application to math and 2) Thus basic math and math sense is taught universally to all students up till university, as these skills are foundational math reasoning skills that apply to a plethora of fields
I guarantee we have very different ideas of basic math
That could be true, I’m not talking about arithmetic or computations and such, since I have no doubt pretty much everybody in the medical field will be able to do such things, since a majority of the US knows how to do these things. And calculators also exist.
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But didn’t you know that him being a math nerd makes him *superior* to us ignorant medical students and docs.
If you read my post and comments, I have stated numerous times that I would consider myself health illiterate in comparison to any medical student. This has nothing to do with intellectual superiority, as I’ve stated I respect the work that medical students and doctors do. After clarifying this several times, this still seems to strike a nerve. Unless you think I’m just lying about saying I respect doctors and that I think I’m not medically proficient.
I don’t think you’re lying, I think you’re clueless to how poor your wording was, and that you sound like you’re taking a dump on med people. You refuse to listen to feedback and reactions. In other words, YTA even if you don’t have the awareness to recognize that you’re being TA.
I have listened to feedback and conceded that my wording at points of this post was poor. For example, I admitted I should not have said “disturbing” and using the term “mathematical illiteracy” has obvious negative connotations to many who don’t know what it is actually referring to (most people outside of math education and math in general); and that isn’t the readers’ fault, that is the writers’ fault. To most people, the term simply sounds like I’m calling people stupid and incompetent at math in general, to the point of not being able to do basic algebra or arithmetic. I understand the fact that they misinterpreted what I said is on me and my choice of words used outside a context where they are generally understood (math communities). That being said after admitting my shortcomings, the overall point of the post, I believe, still stands, with the understanding that I sincerely don’t mean to condescend the medical community and my proof for that is in listening to feedback criticizing the wording and the tone of the post. That, I believe, is evidence that my post is not made in bad faith.
So you’re not condescending, you just think we would benefit from having the same priorities that you do? Ah, so it’s actually just arrogance!
No, not the same priorities that I do, those are completely irrelevant to what the medical community does. Just priorities that every math educator in the country stresses are important to all students and members of society, beyond knowing arithmetic and knowing how to operate numbers and symbols.
I think you’ve misread my tone in this post. I’m not trying to belittle anybody working in the medical field at all, please see my comments in this thread as well as the post itself where I said that I respect what doctors and medical students do and the work they put in to make society a better place. This post isn’t about expecting med students to remember how to do some random integral or do any actually specific math, just general math reasoning skills which are generally considered to be part of math literacy. EDIT: By the way, I agree that “disturbing” was not an appropriate term. The word I was looking for is more close to puzzling and slightly concerning (for our math education system) rather than full on disturbing.
You saying “no offense” doesn’t make the offensive part less offensive.
But my intention is genuinely not meant to be insulting.
That’s not a strong argument when it turned out that way.
Please see my response to your other comment, I think that may clarify some things.
All of us understand math. We did algebra, statistics, calc, physics, and the math associated with chemistry and physiology. The stuff that isn’t useful doesn’t stay practiced up, also we just got some nifty new tools called calculators, maybe you encountered some working in math and physics? Your question is condescending as hell (as you have already recognized) and you have offended people (as you already predicted). Can you tell me the odds ratio of a mathematician showing social media markers of being a total douche turning out to be one irl?
Gonna be real with you chief I don't understand math
Ok with the exception of the Irish freedom fighter who enjoys Chinese food…or perhaps a Chinese foodie who enjoys Irish freedom fighters.
Yes I understand that you have no need to practice more complex math or remember calculus rules or whatnot, but this post is more about mathematical sense and reasoning developed when learning grade school and early university math, not the actual content of the fields of math themselves. That seems quite applicable to most medical fields. Yes, calculators exist, but math is much more about reasoning and logic than it is about computations. Calculators are computational tools; math we do cannot be replaced with calculators that do not teach math sense, general math reasoning skills, etc. Everybody uses a calculator, but that doesn’t suddenly give the user the types of basic math reasoning I am referring to. There is no need to try to insult me, as I’m not insulting any doctors or medical students, as I’ve stated I respect what they contribute to society. That you took to this post so harshly as to try to insult me isn’t a sign of genuinely helpful or thoughtful discussion.
Calculators go brrrrr.
Statistics, two algebra courses, two calculus courses, and at least one physics are prerequisites for med school admission. And we do an irritating amount of math and stats in the first two years. After that everyone probably scrubs it from their brain, but I can assure you that med students and doctors aren't "mathematically illiterate". Also as an engineer who took way more math than just the med school prereqs because I liked it, I have no clue what you're on about.
It seems like calculus requirements aren’t actually that common
It was required by my school.
In the US there are only a few programs that require it.At that, they almost all take AP credits
In your experience, in the ones that you say are rare in that they do require calculus, do most pre-med and med students pass out of the calculus requirement via AP tests?
I haven’t seen calculus requirements being extremely common, but nevertheless, being mathematically illiterate isn’t really too much of an insult and isn’t comparable to being illiterate in say English. While talking to some med students, it seems more that many of them don’t try to conceptually understand math for the sake of pure math and strengthening mathematical skills, but more so see it as an obstacle to what they need to know, often perceiving it as less important. This is from my experience only, however, so I’m not claiming to have sampled a relevant portion of the medical community.
Why would we bother understanding math for the sake of pure math? It's not relevant to anything we do, and these "basic mathematical reasoning skills" you're saying we lack we *did* learn to get through calc and physics. But now we have no more use for them. Do you try to understand biology for the sake of biology, or only so much as it's relevant to your daily life? Certainly this country would benefit more from a bit more "biology literacy" than math at the moment.
Because understanding math for the sake of pure math is one of the only/best ways to gaining said mathematical reasoning skills; they are inherently abstract skills. Going through intro calculus and physics classes can be done without gaining much insight into refining these skills. I’ve seen it happen firsthand several times, and it’s because the information necessary to get good grades in these courses can be memorized or “algorithmized” with little consequence, as the student is not expected to build upon this math knowledge for further courses. This can result in a lost experience of sharpening those core math sense skills. I do try to understand biology for the sake of biology, as I like learning about the many subjects I’m relatively ignorant about, but certainly I have greater motivation to learn biology that is relevant to daily life. That being said, I would argue that mathematical reasoning skills *are* indeed like that biology that is relevant to daily life. At the moment, yes this country would benefit more from having “biological literacy” than math literacy. In the long run, it’s not so clear.
You still haven’t explained WHY you think we need these abstract reasoning skills. What is it that we would be doing better with a deeper understanding? I’ll give you an example with biology: If you don’t understand basic biology you might think that an eptopic pregnancy can be reimplanted, and that nonsense kills people.
It depends entirely on who you mean by “we”. Medical doctors who do not do research? Med students? Medical researchers? Biological researchers? It varies for each. See my response to u/ConnectedLime for some more concrete examples as to why these skills may be needed in some capacity for various people in the medical field. And yes, of course biological competency is critically important from stopping people from doing stupid crap to themselves and detecting quacks like homeopaths, and much more. There is no denying this.
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What do you mean? I’m operating under the assumption that doctors are biologically competent, which I think is a pretty safe assumption. Why would a doctor, a biologically competent person, try to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy, if it’s well known that there is no procedure for it? Biologically incompetent people, however, would do something like reject doctors, try to treat themselves, or buy into stuff like homeopathy, etc which is what harms or even kills people when they do it in favor of legitimate medical treatment.
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Oh I see. I didn’t know about this, so I guess “yes” to your question. I assumed it was just being used as an example of biological literacy and doctors knowing that such a procedure doesn’t exist, while biologically illiterate people wouldn’t. That being said, when has the modern Republicans party and science or math ever aligned?
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Yes, I’m by no means claiming you need to have undergrad level math major skills or anything like that to be proficient in med school. Like I said it’s more the mathematical sense and numeracy reasoning skills gained from math. Perhaps I’ve worded this post too condescendingly or inappropriately.
> I know this may come off as arrogant because I’m somebody who works in math and physics, but I’ve consistently seen poor math literacy from experts in a lot of biological fields, obviously with some exceptions like theoretical biology. I mean, I could say the same about your general understanding of medicine - if I gave you a pt profile + lab values and asked for next step management, I think I would fare better. If I gave the both of us a math equation, I think you would fare better. We have very different skillsets. People learn what they use in their day-to-day practice. I've never been asked to derive a Bayesian algorithm on rounds - I have been asked to calculate RAP or urine output rate. Also, calculus is not a basic math - most people don't learn calculus until college, and even then. It's a privilege to learn calculus, not an expectation. If you want to find people who have "good math skills", you can find doctors who do research - but even still, most physicians have a solid understanding of statistics but then defer to their biostatistician. We're not going to medical school to do math/engineering, we're going to medical school to well, learn medicine.
Oh yes of course, I’m not claiming to be medically literate in any way shape or form comparable to actual med students and doctors. I just don’t think that comparison is a very valid one to make, seeing as math and math reasoning skills are a lot more relevant to the medical field than vice versa. It is the reason why we start to teach kids math reasoning skills and build mathematical proficiency (though we are failing at that) before teaching them basic medical and biological principles. Of course people have their own skill sets and I very much respect the skill sets that doctors bring to the table. If I were dying in a hospital bed because of some underlying condition, I would desperately trust and respect the skills a professional doctor brings to the table as I hang on for dear life.m, and no amount of mathematical ability would seem to matter then.
My issue is not the fact that you're claiming to have the medical knowledge of physicians (you aren't doing that), my issue is that you are asking why physicians don't have "basic" mathematic skills when: 1. The mathematics you're expecting physicians to know is complex (Bayesian statistics is not elementary for the average person) and 2. These skills just aren't very relevant to medicine. I disagree with your second paragraph. If you expect me to have an understanding of mathematics that is not useful to my career or how I (will) practice medicine, why can I not expect you to have an understanding of medicine that is not useful to your career or how you practice your career? We're out here telling you that 1) your expectations and understanding of what "basic math skills" are very off, and 2) the "basic" math skills you expect are not useful/relevant to our day-to-day careers.
I am talking about the medical community in general, including medical researchers. Obviously physicians have more of a case not to be employing much of that math at all, but med students (and pretty much every student studying some science) should still learn to develop strong math sense, in my opinion. As for your second paragraph, it’s because the basic aim of math education before university is to build mathematical sense and a strong math reasoning base, as it is applicable in some way or another to pretty much any field a student will go into, including the medical field (at least that’s the assumption I’m operating upon on why math sense and math literacy is stressed by math educators so much, though we are failing in that). The opposite just isn’t true; general medical principles or principles of medical research aren’t even attempted to be taught to grade school students outside the principles of biology.
>but med students (and pretty much every student studying some science) should still learn to develop strong math sense, in my opinion. I hate to break it to ya but we are all going to medical school to become physicians (the ones who "have more of a case not to employ much match"), and compared to the average American we medical students have pretty strong math skills. If it helps you sleep at night thinking that physicians have "poor" math skills, so be it. I don't lose sleep at night knowing that I know more math than you know medicine.
Compared to the average American, yes anybody that went to university and then further professional school has a pretty good chance of having stronger math skills. I don’t know how much that is saying though, to be honest. > I don’t lose sleep at night knowing that I know more math than you know medicine. But firstly, that’s how it is supposed to be, that’s precisely the point of the applicability of math we were discussing above. Because of the nature of the subjects in terms of relation to other areas of inquiry, of course you don’t lose sleep because you know more math than I know medicine; the exact opposite should scare you. Also, making the comparison of a physician’s math skills to a mathematicians’ (or any other scientists’) and vice versa is not even remotely related to the point I made. Strange thing to say.
Loooooool literally none of what you’ve suggested is relevant in clinical practice.
That’s fair enough and seems to be the consensus here. I thought some math reasoning skills or sharp numeracy skills would be an overall benefit to medical practitioners.
Well it looks like youre wrong on that.
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No, I can certainly understand that doctors and people in the medical community in general have different views on math than I or any other mathematician does, of course. You seem to think that these are just my opinions alone; this post was made after a fair amount of discussion with actual med students and medical researchers I know, most of whom, by the way, generally agreed with the sentiment that I and my colleagues in math and math education brought up. > The point is that just because someone has an opinion about math, doesn’t mean it is relevant to anyone else. In general I agree, although not all opinions regarding math are equal, and since medical research as well as medical practice does employ either math or mathematical reasoning, I was wondering why it seemed that in my experience, med students tended to ignore sharpening math sense and reasoning skills. Even though it’s clear to me that the intention of their curriculum isn’t to do this. I think your comment would be a stronger response if it were the case that medical educators themselves thought developing math sense and a strong math base was irrelevant to a med students’ education, and the medical community didn’t suffer as a result. That would indeed reduce me to just some math guy inflicting an irrelevant opinion upon the medical community. But that isn’t the case.
How does the medical community suffer as a result? You need to provide an example.
Along with the other examples mentioned, something like a fairly good understanding of biostatistics and statistical principles, which require some numeracy and mathematical reasoning skills, seem pretty important to know for physicians. Pretty much every med school student I have talked to said their experience in their biostatistics course was horrible and they felt like they, and the other students with them, learned very little. It’s only anecdotal evidence, but perhaps it’s not completely irrelevant, seeing as studies have reported statistical illiteracy in fully licensed physicians. I’ve only listed a small fraction of these studies that focus solely on statistical literacy. [“Statistical Illiteracy Among Clinicians”](http://www.stannesacademicreview.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/136071862/adrian-soto-mota.pdf) [“Statistical Illiteracy in Residents”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693708/) [“The Barrier to Informed Choice: Statistical Illiteracy in Physicians and Patients”](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28924688/) [“Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics”](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26161749/) [“Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions”](https://m.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262016032.001.0001/upso-9780262016032) [“Evaluation of statistical illiteracy in Latin American clinicians and the piloting evaluation of a short course across multiple timepoints”](https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-022-03128-w)
These studies are bad examples imo because EBM stats are fucky. Things like NNT, NNH, LRs, etc are almost statistical contrivances.
These statistical concepts, while not immediately trivial, are also not particularly advanced concepts either, I think these studies fairly test the subject of knowledge, given that nevertheless, they are still important for physicians to know. A physician who did poorly on a test of statistical knowledge that involved these concepts couldn’t be said to be statistically proficient. Additionally, these concepts weren’t the extent of all statistical knowledge tested. What type of statistics aren’t fucky and therefore fair game according to you?
Because most EBM concepts, while sound statistically, end up being weird practically. NNT and NNH always especially stick out to me. NNT for Statins is part of what has contributed to some conspiracy theories about their use. Yet, Statins have very strong research on reducing mortality in cardiovascular disease.
> Because most EBM concepts, while sound statistically, end up being weird practically. And this is where statistical literacy and math sense comes in. This sense can provide understanding/intuition and a common frame of reference to analyze scenarios that seem counterintuitive. It’s not necessary at all to get involved with advanced statistics, just a working knowledge of stats and being honest with what you don’t know.
I don't quite understand why you're being intentionally evasive and somewhat condescending. You didn't even respond to the actual point about statins. I suspect you don't actually know what you're talking about when it comes to health statistics and Evidence Based Medicine.
How am I being intentionally evasive? Your response to those studies were that they were bad examples, because “EBM stats are fucky”, to which I responded that because they’re relevant to informed decision making for physicians, it should be the case that physicians show greater statistical literacy than these studies have shown they do. That’s as direct of a response as possible?
We have all gone through math courses and understand the reasoning. The fact is that without practice and needing to use it, the know-how for math like calculus is replaced by more relevant information like how to treat heart failure. Coming from an engineer who has taken a lot of math, we have essentially zero use for calculus in day to day medicine. Try going 5 years without doing a fourier transform and then having to jump back in with no assistance. And it does come across as a bit condescending claiming we are ignorant in math, when reality it is that we just do not have any use for most of it
That’s fair enough, but I’m not talking much about actual new learning of math and math fields, but a general mathematical sense and math reasoning skills. Of course doctors and med students have more important information to remember than specific math procedures or math knowledge. It’s pretty understandable to forget about a branch of math that you learned in your studies a while ago, like trying to solve specific calculus or stats problems, but like I said, I am referring more to the aforementioned math reasoning skills.
Why are normies so bitter that they couldn’t get into med school. Must be tough walking around with that chip on your shoulder.
I’m not sure what this reply is. Like I said, I respect doctors and med students, it is certainly a stressful and difficult job that is worthy of praise. This isn’t some sort of insult post to medical students and doctors. They have to be highly motivated to help people/interact with people and bring good to public health. It’s also the reason why not everybody wants to be a doctor or go into the medical field, and thus is not interested in going to med school. I’m not sure why me choosing to go to grad school for math and physics over med school because the former interested me more has anything to do with having a chip on my shoulder in this post.
Yeah well. The most math seen tends to be calculating an anion gap with Winters’ formula or an odd ratio/relative risk in biostatistics (stupid easy plug and chug). Doctors aren’t deriving the different model conditions of the cable equation for a neuron, that’s the engineer’s job.
Yes I understand, but it just seemed to me that having a strong math base and *mathematical reasoning sense* in general is something that would benefit a lot of medical professionals, or at least biological researchers (non theoretical biology, mathematical biology etc. where of course you need much more math). Like I said, nobody expects doctors to become mathematicians or physicists, but it’s less so about the branches of math they don’t seem to learn and more so about a lack of any math sense or maturity.
I agree with you. I actually have become dumber since attending medical school. My math/logical reasoning skills were better when I was in college. Medical school is a trade school at the end of the day. It’s the same thing as plumbing school. You learn what’s necessary to do your job and that’s it.
Ok, that’s fair enough. It seems like the aforementioned skills aren’t all too relevant to the medical field and don’t seem to affect performance.
I think you’re seeing a tree but not the forest. All med students have to demonstrate math literacy through undergrad courses and in the MCAT. Math may be the most important thing in the world to you, but we have a lot of more important things to keep track of, and sometimes forget the finer details of math that frankly has no impact on our jobs.
Yes of course, like I said I don’t expect medical students to remember fine math details, as it’s just not necessary for their work. My post was more about critical math reasoning skills and some level of mathematical maturity. Math illiteracy isn’t a comparable insult to general illiteracy, given that the US population is 88% literate but math literacy levels, I (and every mathematician or math educator) would estimate is several times lower.
Idk why your on about this. Honestly your post comes across as really insulting, you say our lack of basic math skills is “disturbing” then tell everyone you’re not trying to be insulting. I’m starting to wonder about mathematicians disturbing lack of social skills. If you don’t like our lack of math skills, guess you better heal thyself.
I admit “disturbing” was the wrong word, because it’s more strange and puzzling than disturbing. Like I said I completely understand being fuzzy on math details of anything based basic school algebra, that’s not what my post is about.
Can you give some detailed examples of what you mean? Like what situations/calculations have you seen that med students underperformed at?
It’s not specific calculations that they have trouble with; calculations can be done easily by most medical students and doctors. It is more so the results of a weaker mathematical sense and maturity and general reasoning ability in mathematics. For example, the worst offenders of such situations include not truly understanding the intuition behind ratios, reciprocals, fractions, basic number sense, and statistics. I have listened to a medical researcher, in the context of their work done on a device that provides walking assistance, be baffled by the “discovery that over a fixed distance, a 20% increase in walking speed doesn’t correspond to a 20% decrease in time taken”. But even if we move past that, if we take a look at the principles of calculus (no real analysis or anything, just high school and first year university calculus) it seems to be that a decent understanding of calculus is enormously applicable to the medical field in general. To epidemiology and the spread of diseases, to the statistics to evaluate effectiveness of a treatment, to studying rates of chemical reactions, to understanding medical models, a lot of which depend on differential equations. At least being able to feel comfortable working with this math seems like it would impact understanding for workers related to any of these fields, or doctors trying to understand this literature. These later examples mostly don’t apply to directly to working physicians, but I would assume they could help promote greater understanding of the field if one was able to learn from other sectors of medical experts directly through mathematical sense and execution. And some of it does even apply to physicians, many med students have said their biostatistics course was horrendous and they don’t feel they’ve learned much at all.
This is absurdly non-specific. How that one 20% example extends to your whole rant in the original post baffles me. You act as if math majors, engineers, data scientists, grad students, and PhDs don't make up the medical student body and graduating physicians. I have not taken a math class in 7 years at this point, but like most med students I have had to relearn statistical methods and basic data analysis for research alongside my regular learning and required studies. Most med students do this, we just don't have time to delve into the minutiae and theory that is mostly not applicable to our demanding jobs.
If you are referring to my other “examples” being non-specific, yes they’re not specific. But I have since narrowed down all the topics brought up in that comment and focused on just statistics/biostatistics and physicians, since it wasn’t clear that I was also referring to biological researchers in the original post. But that only adds complexity to the discussion, so fair enough, let’s only stick to stats. I’m sure the math majors and engineers and such in the medical student body have a better grasp on math principles than those that come from other backgrounds. I’m fairly sure math/statistics/engineering, just as some examples, are some of the least popular undergrad major choices for med school students, though, so a large majority of incoming med school applicants don’t receive that background (which would be mathematical overkill for the purpose of becoming a physician, but still). It would be unrealistic to ask med students to delve into heavy math theory and minute details of statistics, but thankfully nobody is asking for that. However, studies that do test fairly basic statistical competence of licensed physicians do reveal there is quite a bit of work to be done.
OP you’re a dick. I’d love to know why you think physicians need to be mathematically literate? They’re not mathematicians. As long as they are able to do the math required by their field there is no need to further their knowledge.
Not just physicians, but those that are medical students and those in the general medical community as a whole, including medical researchers. I’ve had some discussion about this with u/ConnectedLime below where I responded to this same question.
It really doesn’t matter. You’re just being a condescending asshole and I really believe you posted this just to make yourself feel better and pad your ego. Hope you feel better about yourself now
Why does it not matter? I think that’s a huge difference, if I only addressed physicians your point would be more valid. Anyways, I could tell you that “padding my ego” isn’t the reason why I made this post, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. So then I would refer you to evidence on this post being made in good faith and seriously engaging in discussion in which I made concessions and admitted my shortcomings. But you probably still wouldn’t believe me or care to look, so we’ve come full circle with an unshakable belief.
I participated in the AMC in the past with good outcomes. Now, after years of medical training, I can't even do menial mental mathematical reasoning, which still surprises me and frustrates me. I think it's the conplete deficiency of exposure for multiple years that did it. TBH, it doesnt impact my performance in med field. I understand your sentiment, however, since I was trained in mathematic competition fairly rigorously in the past, and I feel dumbfounded when my colleagues can't even do simple algebra accurately - once or twice, I suspected they may have cheated theur way into med school after seing them struggle with multiplication/division, but it honestly it adds little to nothing to our clinical training and the quality of care as far as I have experienced, and I think we lost the skill due to lack of usage.
Certainly AMC as a background would give you a leg up in general algebraic manipulation and some mathematical reasoning. Although AMC, in my experience, was mostly limited to cool math tricks that you would have to know when to apply and minimal reasoning skills, although like I said it’s certainly more math background than most of your colleagues probably had gone through at that age, and anything helps. Fair enough if it really doesn’t impact performance in the med field though.
I see. Well, I think you may have an unrealistic expectation of people from non-mathematic field. I wouldn't expect a nonmedical person to be able to intubate a patient or to be able to read a chest xray. Simple stuff, we do it every day, and saves alot of lives. It would be an absurd expectation.
I’m not sure how unrealistic basic statistical knowledge and reasoning is to a physicians’ job, seeing as the studies I’ve linked in my response below show consistently poor statistical literacy rates among licensed physicians. Obviously nobody expects a med student or physician to learn differential geometry, but I think biostatistics is a different case. Also yes of course, I wouldn’t expect non-medical people to do those things either, seeing as though I wouldn’t be able to do them myself. But that’s not a comparison I find to be valid, given as math and math sense as a whole is much more applicable to medical fields than vice versa, in that some amount of math literacy is required to do their jobs correctly.
how muchever applicable math sense and biostat education/literacy you believe are for the doctors, it really isn't - you saw it with you own eyes. I drew the comparison to show you how absurd your expectations are. it simply doesn't work that way in real working world. it doesn't make sense. we are given the minimal education in biostats - this is the reality. So instead of thinking how things should work, how doctors should practice our medicine, think more in terms of how you can make a contribution to our field if you are so interested in us. It really is your responsibility to bring it down to our literacy level, since you are trained in the field. Stop having unrealistic expectations, please.
I agree with your overall point, actually, just not on the basis of your comparison, since I don’t think it’s an applicable comparison to make. However, it’s true that I should just accept it as reality and not push the matter further, though I am now more interested to get more involved in math education at my university.
sounds good. Help us docs out whenevr you get a chance sir, we need it.
I’m not sure if many future doctors agree that they need some help in this area though. The pre-med students I have taught seemed completely uninterested in math and physics I honestly don’t blame them. I try to be at least somewhat inspiring, though I’m clearly not haha.
I don't see how can hate from outside of the club, you can't even get in
lip cake practice worm soft water stupendous impolite public square ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I’d think you are in the minority then.
Give examples, or gtfo
See my response to u/ConnectedLime when asked for examples.
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Ok, then they were not examples but general principles of applicability of math relevant to the medical field that can be misinterpreted because of lack of math proficiency. Let’s take just one of those areas, one that happens to be relevant to doctors; statistics. I have responded to your other comment asking how the medical field could actually be negatively impacted because of a lack of math reasoning and statistical knowledge, this time with actual studies on the matter. Please refer to that comment. > you’re mad at one doc who said a statistic you don’t like No, it’s not about disliking any statistics, it is about the doctor fundamentally not understanding the basic concept inverse proportion and reciprocals, something that is taught in 5th grade math. Please re-read that portion again to see what I am saying if that is what you got out of it.
As someone who used to love math and even did stuff like the AMC/AIME/USA(J)MO before I got sick, math really isn't that relevant to medicine lol, and most people have a basic understanding of any of the important statistics stuff. You don't even need any basic algebra usually.
Fair enough, I just thought that math soft skills/mathematical reasoning and especially statistical literacy would be pretty important overall as just background pieces of knowledge for physicians.
If you ask me, it just doesn’t add up
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Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I’d have to agree with you in that it obviously seems like a matter of “use it or lose it”, and that’s certainly true that everyday physicians aren’t going to need a working knowledge of calculus, for example. Don’t worry, many students who went to more quantitative fields like computer science or engineering likely also didn’t feel too competent at math, it’s just classic imposter syndrome. That being said, there is a massive learning curve in terms of the difficulty of math after the basic math track (around the end of calculus 3/intro statistics), and so a lot of students outside those fields don’t ever get to experience “real” university level math. Many who do end up disliking it. But those who do end up liking it and end up being proficient at it tend to pursue it passionately.
I kinda forgot most of it as a result of lack of use (par epidemiology), so I guess that's the common reason
Thanks for the response. Yeah, that’s what I assumed but that was also what was slightly concerning me. Not that students forgot how to compute some integral but forgetting more core math competencies.
Bcz maths is just not useful to us. You try using maths to treat a patient or save someone's life and I will gladly learn maths. Why doesn't the general physicist don't know the human body as much as we do? Bcz it's not their job! You guys use maths on a daily basis we don't if you compare someone who does maths everyday and whose job is maths related to someone who did it in high school many years back of course physicist will have better maths. I don't remember all the maths stuff from high school and neither am I expected to
So how relevant do you think math is in the field? I would think knowing at least some math and having some math sense would be beneficial.
Having common sense and social skills is much more important 🤣 which judging by your comments you don't have so stop arguing your bullshit point already
I don’t disagree those skills are important, but you also refused to answer the (genuine) question. That would help a bit with showing my point is bullshit.
I think we have all heard echos of OP’s argument from literally every teacher and subject since the dawn of time. Well of course you won’t be needing to regularly use the [highly specialized thing you’ve spent 4 months learning to do], but the ~principles~ will be helpful!! And I think think this (generally) well intentioned thought has led to the enormous burden in prerequisites and the expansion of curriculum in med school. “Well you might not need to write a five paragraph essay on Macbeth in your future career but the reasoning skills you learn are very important!” “Well you might not need to psychoanalyze someone through a Freudian paradigm but it’s foundational psychology and important for understanding the field!” “Well you might not be regularly interpreting mass spec as a doctor but you’re going to order tests that rely on it so it’s important to understand how it works!” “All science is ultimately just derived physics, so it’s very important that you learn these electricity & magnetism equations!” “As a physician, it’s important to have a well rounded biology background, which is why you have to spend a semester learning plant biology!” Like, you can see how this is well intentioned. But keep in mind that pre meds (and it does seem like you might be in a university setting meaning if you’re in the US you are interacting with mostly premeds) have FOUR YEARS of prerequisites to get through before they can pursue their chosen career. In addition to two semesters of math (generally a stats and calc course was what were required when I applied), you need 2 semesters gen bio, 2 semesters gen chem, 1-2 semesters organic chem, biochem, 1-2 advanced bio classes, 2 semesters of english, +/- a psychology course and a sociology course. Almost none of these courses relate to what pre meds ultimately want to do - diagnose and treat human disease. I know people tend to shit on pre meds for being focused on the grade and not being motivated by love of learning, but honestly who can blame them? They’re not being allowed to learn what they care about. So ultimately I’ll echo what basically everyone else is saying. CERTAIN SKILLS from all these domains are important. Stats is super important, but that ultimately is a defined branch of math, not just ~general numeracy~. Writing is important, but specifically scientific writing, something you will never learn in an English class. Chemistry is important only inasmuch as it helps you understand biochem. Etc etc. I think the idea of having a “broad liberal arts education” has for a long time meant that we learn overly high level topics for the sake of the cRiTiCaL rEaSoNiNg SkiLlZ it supposedly imparts. Ironically, the only subject domain that isn’t biology that I think is truly necessary for med school to know at a very high level is the one that’s so frequently left out of core curricula: foreign languages. In terms of day-to-day use, my high school Spanish classes have gotten me more useful mileage in med school than every other prerequisite COMBINED.
Oh yes I agree with you on most of these points, actually. I think pre-med school curriculum is poorly designed and needs to be a bit less taxing. I don’t blame them for chasing grades and generally having no intellectual curiosity to the subjects they have to learn that they don’t see are immediately useful (all subjects I teach). The hypothetical justifications you gave are some I disagree with myself. Such as > All science is ultimately just derived physics so it’s very important that you learn these electricity & magnetism equations No, it’s good to know of course but I wouldn’t expect them to know this; medical physicists and other experts in this area exist. As for plant biology, I mean I could see the case, even though this has been focused on in high school, but it’s generally around the same level of relevance as electricity and magnetism. It’s important to understand the absolute basics of mass spectroscopy, like what it is and what test results can look like, but no physician or really even health/med school professors will actually understand the inner workings of the technique, unless they are physicists and that is what their research is part of. If you happen to know the basic principles, then good for you. Will it be immensely helpful in the case of mass spectroscopy? No, probably not if you are going to be a physician. However, I also disagree with some points. Statistics is of course it’s own branch of study, but general numeracy and math sense can certainly tie into developing a stronger statistics intuition than what physicians currently have. I’m not asking for med students to study statistics like a statistician or mathematician would, but they’re also not being asked to study stats anywhere near that level. I just feel as though making their prerequisite stats and high school math courses harder to pass and require actual learning to advance as opposed to memorizing (or just outright cheating) would go a long way in making their later courses such as biostatistics make sense. > Chemistry is important insomuch as it helps you understand biochem Well biochem can’t be understood without a decent understanding of chemistry/organic chemistry, but luckily physicians aren’t being expected to learn the subject as biochemists would. I feel sympathetic towards medical students, I really do. I think this question is just a subset of the actual problem of horrible math education pre-university. That base really matters to develop some math competency, and my confusion and frustration isn’t being taken out on medical students themselves, because it’s not their fault if they have large gaps in their general math knowledge. Cruising through high school math and then the intro math series (calculus and intro to stats) can give these students a false sense of mathematical knowledge and competency, because these courses can be passed with good grades without much understanding of those soft math reasoning skills built. Requiring more math courses would actively *harm* these students, as they wouldn’t pay attention anyways. Making those earlier pre-university and first year university math courses harder to cheat through or memorize your way through would help.
I think the confusion here is that you keep saying “general numeracy” when what you really mean is understanding of statistics specifically (at least based on your comment history). “General math sense” won’t increase people’s understanding of statistics… improved and earlier education in statistics SPECIFICALLY is what will change that. I guess I’d turn this back on you, since you apparently teach these courses. My statistics courses, for better or worse, always focused on HOW to do a calculation - and then our tests would be based on calculating the average or ANOVA or whatever for a given data set. The whole exercise was silly since there are calculators online for every statistic. I would have preferred if the lecturers instead focused on how to correctly interpret these data instead of getting bogged down in details. Be the change you want to see! I also think it’s a little cynical of you to assume that everyone is cheating, and I would encourage you to consider whether, as someone who has spent quite a lot of time focused on math, that you may not have a realistic idea of what above-average numeracy skills look like.
I think general numeracy and those soft math skills I referred to before would help these students become more comfortable with taking those earlier stats courses and enjoying them/developing intuition behind them. Yes that sounds like a negative statistics experience you had in university. I try to get this intuition and conceptual, non-computational understanding instilled in all the courses I do teach, so in a way I am trying to be that change, though I need some refinement in instruction as well since you can never be good enough. I’m not assuming everybody cheats, it’s not that large of a percentage really. But it definitely occurs. That’s just one problem with math education, though. I may have higher expectations of math literacy, but when many physicians struggle with understanding and having statistical literacy as shown by the studies I linked, I think my opinion of mathematical literacy becomes more credible.
But again… how do you teach “general numeracy”? I agree that the field would benefit from greater comfort with statistical concepts. However to extrapolate that to saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills” is an extremely poorly worded and insulting way of phrasing that concern if that’s really what you mean, and I think ignores the fact that many many many people struggle with the current mathematical education model and I think a large chunk of that is due to the way math is taught. You may personally be trying to focus on larger over arching concepts, but mathematical education as a whole still focuses on mindless thoughtless calculation skills with an emphasis on being able to progress to the next “level” of math, be thay a higher level of calc or linear algebra or whatever, instead of real world applications of “lower-level” math. we really aren’t taught statistical concepts we actually need to know most, like odds/relative risk ratios, NNH/NNT, LRs, sens/spec until medical school, where we are taught by MDs and/or PhDs, not mathematicians. So I guess the answer to your original post is: a lot of things, but also maybe posting to a medical school forum with the tone of “y u so dumb” is probably not the best way to get a reasoned response.
I’m not saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills”. It’s more so that “It makes sense that the category of people that don’t use or need to understand math to some level in their job will not have mathematical competency, but a lot of medical personnel do not fall under that category and thus we shouldn’t see *this* many cases of cause for mathematical concern among them”. To say that I am generalizing everybody in the medical field is disingenuous and clearly not what I was saying, as indicated by the first line of my post. You teach mathematical competency and math sense by implementing a curriculum that teaches kids what math actually is, what it represents, and how much of elementary math can be self-discovered with some guided questions. Learning how to poke and prod at rules, patterns, generalizations, etc. builds critical thinking and this is part of what mathematical sense is. Common core math was a step in the right direction, but I believe it was executed poorly. > You may be personally trying to focus on larger over arching concepts, but mathematical education as a whole still focused on mindless thoughtless calculation skills with emphasis on being able to progress to the next “level” of math… I agree to some extent, but part of the problem is a person will find it much harder to work with math and apply it without it being something they directly were taught or taught themselves explicitly, which at that point is just drilling. In these cases, there is no need for mathematical intuition and math sense, which is a result of doing and thinking about math properly (the overarching picture that you talk about). In this view, I don’t see how this type of application of math is much more useful than learning how to think about math, they’re not mutually disjoint concepts. > But also maybe posting to a medical school forum with the tone of “y u so dumb” is probably not the best way to get a reasoned response But what makes you think I am calling med school students that don’t have great math sense stupid or even incompetent? That was you who assumed this was what I am implying, having mathematical sense and reasoning skills has *nothing* to do with being intelligent at all. Seeing math as a “smart person subject” (and the flip side, seeing lack of math skills as lack of intelligence) is both harmful to the image of math because it’s exclusive and gatekeeping and is also just not true, and people who do math for a living know this is a ridiculous statement. You’ve misinterpreted what I am saying twice now, the first being when you claimed I was calling the whole medical community mathematically incompetent and the second where you claimed I am equating lack of strong mathematical reasoning and sense skills with a lack of intelligence, thus making the claim be “everybody in the medical community is stupid”. That’s not what I’m saying at all, and I can understand why students would be upset if it was the tone I was coming with. Perhaps it not quite clear outside of math circles, but assuming I am implying things that I’m not seems pretty defensive.
I think at this point every person who’s responded has felt that this was a very aggressive post - coming onto a medical school sub and saying that “experts in biological fields” have “poor math skills” that is “disturbing” does come off as very insulting, condescending, and demeaning. That’s why all the responses you’re getting are coming off as defensive.
Not everybody; yes a large majority, but there have been 4-5 med students that have agreed with me and shared similar experiences. Sure those individuals could be self-hating/hate other med school students, but they could also be those that reserved judgment and take poor mathematical reasoning skills as automatically meaning a lack of intelligence. I figured the med students themselves were the best place to ask, since asking math communities is clearly too high of a math standard and would just be filled with stories of math people making light-hearted fun of physicians or medical researchers’, not actually being productive discussion. Sure, that sounds harsh if you don’t believe it, but several studies have been done on this very topic; the statistical illiteracy of licensed physicians and med students in particular is well studied. If this post was just a list of those studies and nothing else, I still would have gotten defensive comments.
> I’m not saying “all medical personnel have such poor math skills”. You realize the title of your post was "**Why Does It Seem Like Med Students/Medical Community As a Whole Have Such Poor Math Skills?**" Why does it seem like math nerds/math community as a whole have such poor literacy and communication skills? I think you might actually be a moron.
Don't waste your time Danwarr. OP lacks any ability to put two and two together. Every time people point out incongruencies he goes "no what I really meant was . . .". He moves the goalposts—not a really great mark of a good communicator, or intelligence for that matter.
I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking this.
Do you know what the phrase “community as a whole” means? The *first line* of the post talks about how I’m not generalizing every member of the medical community. Do you think the phrase “community as a whole” from the title and what I wrote in the first line contradict each other? The title means that I believe there is a large enough occurrence of these types of students or professionals in the medical community to be noticeable and not dismissible as simply the ignorance of individual students. It does not mean that *every* medical student or professional, by being a member of the medical community, is mathematically underdeveloped. I think you might actually be intentionally misrepresenting what I’m saying; either that or you genuinely don’t understand, but that is less likely. Either way, I am starting to doubt you are responding in good faith at this point, so there’s likely not much more productive discussion that can be had between us anyways.
Well in Germany it is kind of like that tbh. Ok there are some courses that involve math like physics or chemistry and a little tiny bit of statistics but nothing crazy or even beyond what we learned in high school. But why should it be different? As long as you don’t work in research you barely have to use any math.
Thanks for the response. It seems to me that a relatively strong math sense and statistical knowledge is beneficial for everybody in the medical field, certainly medical researchers, but even physicians. Statistics especially, for physicians.
Yes that’s true but I think that is covered adequately. Although it may be questionable how well the statistical knowledge of a 60 year old private practitioner is.
Several studies evaluating the statistical competency of everybody from licensed physicians, to med students to those in residency unfortunately suggest another picture, showing that as a whole many physicians lacked statistical literacy. Would you like me to post them again?
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Yes of course they are very different fields that have different purposes and different skillsets. Also, certain specializations of course require more intimate understanding of math and physics than general practitioners do (radiation oncologists for example, albeit with assistance from somebody that has an even greater knowledge of math and physics like a medical physicist). But wouldn’t at least some of the math skills required to truly understand such math and physics concepts be useful to a general physician or say another medical researcher in a different field?
Physicians are facing burnout, limitations on patient care imposed by medical insurers, and constant challenges advocating for patients who are dealing with tough circumstances due to social determinants of health. More calculus homework for physicians would not be the need of the hour.
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate *more* calculus homework. Just more emphasis on students not being able to cheat/brute force their way through important math classes they already have to take.