Ink and Equations

Real science, written as stories, poems, satire and speeches

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Ink and Equations

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Real science, written as stories, poems, satire and speeches.

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  1. How an Old Ball Swings the Wrong WayUnpacked, 8 Nov
  2. Why the Sea Bulges Away From the MoonUnpacked, 7 Nov
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    Being wrong, usefully

    Mistakes, theories and good guesses: how knowledge actually moves.

    123 3 pieces, best read in this order

    1. Rhetoric Aristotle Was Wrong for 2,000 Years, and That's Good News A speech arguing that being wrong, carefully and in public, is the most useful thing a scientist can do. The idea Science moves forward by finding where its best ideas are wrong, and a good wrong idea is often what makes the right one possible.
    2. Rhetoric No, It's Not "Just a Theory" An opinion piece on the most misunderstood word in science. The idea In science, a theory is a well-tested explanation that ties together many observations and makes risky predictions that could have proved it wrong but didn't; it is not a guess, and it does not "graduate" into a law.
    3. Rhetoric Guess How Many Times Your Heart Will Beat A speech arguing that every student should be taught to make good guesses, on purpose. The idea A Fermi estimate breaks a big unknown into smaller quantities you can roughly guess; because independent errors partly cancel and only the order of magnitude matters, the product often lands within a factor of two or three of the truth.