• Question: To be at Scientist do ypu have to be good at maths because everything in science has some link with maths? Are you all good at maths :)

    Asked by drstilesjlstermerrygold98 to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi @drstilesjlstermerrygold98

      Like you say everything in science has maths in it, so understanding ‘some’ maths is helpful, but how much probably depends on your area of science. Some of what I do involves complicated mathematics, but sometimes I just need to know how to calculate a mean (average).

      Scientists often have to be technical, creative and good communicators. Most scientists will be better at some of these things that others – you can be excellent at designing experiments, but find it hard to explain them to other people.

      I think the most important thing is that you work hard. I would say I am OK at Maths, which means I know enough to do what I want to do 🙂

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hello!
      To do my job, you need to have a pretty good grasp of statistics, as most of the job is statistics. However, you wouldn’t need to know all types of maths. As long as you understand why you use different statistical tests depending on the type of data you have, this is the most important thing. There is software that will actually run the tests for you, but you need to know which tests to do!

      I hope this makes sense.

      I liked maths at school, and I was pretty good at it, but I didn’t get an A at A-level, so I was hardly the best in my class or anything like that!

      Do you like it?

Comments

  • Photo: drstilesjlstermerrygold98

    drstilesjlstermerrygold98 commented on :

    thanks 4 the answer it’s really useful – i dont really like maths because am not good at it but my teacher is really nice and makes maths fun, funny and interesting which makes me quite like it 🙂

    • Photo: Tim

      Tim commented on :

      That’s great! Enjoying something is the most important part. If you enjoy something you will work harder at it and you will get better at it. It is always good to have really nice teachers 🙂

  • Photo: Suzi

    Suzi commented on :

    I agree with Tim! If you enjoy it you don’t have to be brilliant at it, and it’s definitely true that the maths I do every day for my PhD is not as hard as A-Level (or probably even GCSE) maths, so if you can do that, you can do anything 🙂