{"id":1529,"date":"2013-01-16T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2013-01-13T05:52:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T05:52:11","slug":"the-nonsense-math-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/2013\/01\/the-nonsense-math-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nonsense Math Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A new study finds that even academic scholars perceived research to be of higher quality if there\u2019s some math involved\u2014even if the math makes no sense<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality. However, this \u201cnonsense math effect\u201d was not found among participants with degrees in mathematics, science, technology or medicine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Via: Freakonomics<\/a>) <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study finds that even academic scholars perceived research to be of higher quality if there\u2019s some math involved\u2014even if the math makes no sense: Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Nonsense Math Effect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new study finds that even academic scholars perceived research to be of higher quality if there\u2019s some math involved\u2014even if the math makes no sense:\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/2013\/01\/the-nonsense-math-effect\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Nonsense Math Effect\" \/>\n<meta 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