4 ms·
My limited experience in this suggests that the main issue is that techies and biologists don't make friends that often and even when do, they they both tend to
by killjoywashere 8y ago
My limited experience in this suggests that the main issue is that techies and biologists don't make friends that often and even when do, they they both tend to glaze out when the other tries to talk shop. One wants to talk about algorithms (the techies) and one wants to talk about classification (the bio people). And we haven't even gotten to the topic of conversation yet.
Another major problem is that medical schools don't require serious math. I genuinely believe the single best way to advance health care would be to make linear algebra a pre-requisite for medical school.
- LeicesterCity 8y agoGenuinely curious, how would learning linear algebra help future medical doctors?
- killjoywashere 8y agoThey don't understand how to think in higher dimensions, or how that quickly separates the trivial from the near-impossible. Many don't understand deeper algorithmic thinking. Recursion, partial differential equations. They gather enough information that they can classify a patient into a storyline and they follow that storyline. If someone adds a new complication to the storyline, they adopt that. If the patient lives, they are happy. If the patient dies, they are sad. Trying to explain to them that we have, today, the tools to concretely rethink all the data about cancer or infectious disease, or inflammatory conditions, or all the above, in innumerable ways, simply escapes them. You can tell them you're funded and have petabytes of data and they just smile and nod and say "Oh, well, start with something small and build up." I say this as a board-certified specialist. My colleagues drive me nuts. And the more powerful (read, "senior") they are, the less they understand.