Stuff Scientists Like

Edit:

sed 's/"Precision. Because you can't always be certain, but would like to reduce your uncertainty./Precision. Because you can't always be certain, but would like to measure your uncertainty more accurately/g'

You bought the domain!?!?? Brilliant.

- Collared shirts. Except for computer scientists.

- JS Bach. Mozart is for wusses. Schoenberg is for poseurs.

- The passive voice, often with bizarre action verbs at the end of the sentence. The eradication of this regretable habit has not yet been effected.

- Saying "we" for "I". Whether that's from self-effacement, self-aggrandizing, or plain schizophrenia I'm not sure.

- Funding. Yeah, oxygen and water are nice, but what would we do without funding?

- Data, or anything that can be presented as such with minimal massaging.

- Saying that "further research is needed", because obviously there is a risk that the sheer brilliance of the paper might drive the entire scientific community to resign en masse, run to the hills and raise sheep for the rest of their lives.

- Beginning to learn exotic languages. With emphasis on the "beginning". I reckon I have begun to learn at least five different languages, including two non-european ones.

- Linearising. Especially when it shouldn't be done. Example: "Character X is clearly dependent on many different genes interacting in a hopelessly complex manner. We solve this difficulty by putting hands on ears, singing "LA-LA-LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU, YOU'RE IT" very loud and assuming that genetic variance for X is entirely additive."

- Adverbs. Someone should look for correlations between number of citations and number of words that end in "-ly".

- Chinese characters. See also "languages" above.

- Procrastinating on the internet. So close that window and go back to work NOW.

= Having a good argument.
= Convincing others they are right.
= Being convinced they are wrong. (May have to wait 5min-5days before the 'enjoy' kicks in.)

How about.... talking about IQ.

Some more things...

- memorizing umpteen digits of the number Pi.

- knowing that "Google"... err "Googol"... was a number before it was a search engine.

- knowing that when someone talks about a "Matrix" they might not be talking about the movie.

- modeling real life phenomena with mathematical models.

- seeing the beauty in the equation... 1 + e ^ (i * Pi) = 0

- knowing how complex numbers and trigonometry relate.

- knowing instantly what geometric shape you get from an equation like: x^2 + y^2 = 8

-

@toto, you said...

"Collared shirts. Except for computer scientists."

:-)

Yeah... I'd say (most) Computer Scientists (and Software Engineers) have an "anti-dresscode".

No collared shirts and no suits. Other than that, it's basically dress however you want to dress.

Even more stuff...

- knowing that Quark isn't just a character on Star Trek.

- knowing what "WWWWW" stands for.

- using backwards E's and upside down A's

- seeing the Greek Capital-Sigma and thinking of addition.

- knowing the difference between "velocity" and "speed"

- knowing that kilogram is NOT a measurement of weight.

- getting upset when they see space movies with gravity when there should be none.

- knowing what "WWWWW" stands for.

Unfortunately it seems to have at least two meanings, one of which seems more related to journalism than science.

- getting upset when they see space movies with gravity sound when there should be none.

:s/gravity/sound/

- Linearising. Especially when it shouldn't be done. Example: "Character X is clearly dependent on many different genes interacting in a hopelessly complex manner. We solve this difficulty by putting hands on ears, singing "LA-LA-LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU, YOU'RE IT" very loud and assuming that genetic variance for X is entirely additive."

well...

Hill et al. Data and theory point to mainly additive genetic variance for complex traits. PLoS Genet (2008) vol. 4 (2) pp. e1000008

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.10000…

Abstract
The relative proportion of additive and non-additive variation for complex traits is important in evolutionary biology, medicine, and agriculture. We address a long-standing controversy and paradox about the contribution of non-additive genetic variation, namely that knowledge about biological pathways and gene networks imply that epistasis is important. Yet empirical data across a range of traits and species imply that most genetic variance is additive. We evaluate the evidence from empirical studies of genetic variance components and find that additive variance typically accounts for over half, and often close to 100%, of the total genetic variance. We present new theoretical results, based upon the distribution of allele frequencies under neutral and other population genetic models, that show why this is the case even if there are non-additive effects at the level of gene action. We conclude that interactions at the level of genes are not likely to generate much interaction at the level of variance.

Author Summary
Genetic variation in quantitative or complex traits can be partitioned into many components due to additive, dominance, and interaction effects of genes. The most important is the additive genetic variance because it determines most of the correlation of relatives and the opportunities for genetic change by natural or artificial selection. From reviews of the literature and presentation of a summary analysis of human twin data, we show that a high proportion, typically over half, of the total genetic variance is additive. This is surprising as there are many potential interactions of gene effects within and between loci, some revealed in recent QTL analyses. We demonstrate that under the standard model of neutral mutation, which leads to a U-shaped distribution of gene frequencies with most near 0 or 1, a high proportion of additive variance would be expected regardless of the amount of dominance or epistasis at the individual loci. We also show that the model is compatible with observations in populations undergoing selection and results of QTL analyses on F2 populations.

Science jokes: "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate!"

ERV.

I have read about LaTeX but when I brought it up in a conversation I was immediately corrected and told to pronounce it "lay-teck".

- Dry erase boards
- Powerpoint
- photoshop (well, at least the dishonest ones love it)
- week-long seminars at choice vacation locals
- When grant writing time is FINALLY over
- free food (wait, that's graduate students)
- Free beer (oops, again graduate students)
- new "toys" ("ooh, a new UV/Vis plate reader!" "check out this new RT-PCR machine!")

Standards: Because there are so many from which to choose.