4 ms·

I've been a Math teacher for forty years now. If you think this title is pumping out the clicks, making big bucks for the ad networks, then I must say that you

I've been a Math teacher for forty years now. If you think this title is pumping out the clicks, making big bucks for the ad networks, then I must say that your experience and mine are very, very different. :-)

entropi 5y ago
I understand that math -in general- don't have much public appeal. But I don't think that exempts math-related articles from having titles which actually reflect their content. "Mathematicians Make Sense of Chaos" is, in my opinion, the same as "Cancer Cured". Which cancer, at which stage, what method, on how many people, how, etc. etc. No matter how interesting the article (don't get me wrong, this IS a very interesting article) you are misdirecting the readers and that's not cool I think.
- thfuran 5y ago
  >Which cancer, at which stage, what method, on how many people, how, etc. etc Presumably that would be in the article body, which can't all fit in the title.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    A better title is "New treatment improve survival rate of cancer patients". It's not a lie. If they have a few extra characters they can add the type of cancer (that is a very important detail) (perhaps the part of the body instead of the technical name), the name of the drug (it's nice to search info) or where the research was done (people love the human touch). The stage is very important, but perhaps it's too technical. I'd like to see if it's it was tested in humans/mice/vitro, many articles with a title that says "cure" are actually articles about a promising in vitro experiment. Also if they had a control group[1], because there are a lot of cures that are just an optimistic view of bad methodology. I think most of the times it's not on purpose, they just skip a few steps to make the research faster, but the steps are there to avoid repeating error detected in previos studies. [1] Preregistered double blind randomized controlled clinical trials that are good enough to be published in a serious peer review journal, or it didn't happen.
- jonsen 5y ago
  May I suggest you consult a dictionary for 'make sense of'.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  It's not like this is Buzzfeed. Quanta's target audience is very much NOT people who would normally be interested in clickbait titles.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I am no mathematician (I’m the OP), but to take this title literally is absurd. If not, we’d have discovered a way to have perfect knowledge of all events, past and future, and proved the whole universe is deterministic, and that it can be entirely represented by a tractable number of values.
Syzygies 5y ago
The Simons Foundation spends money; the money has already been made. Quanta Magazine wants readers, but not for ad revenue. Their metric for success is relative to their intended audience, which is interested in science.

entropi 5y ago

I understand that math -in general- don't have much public appeal. But I don't think that exempts math-related articles from having titles which actually reflect their content. "Mathematicians Make Sense of Chaos" is, in my opinion, the same as "Cancer Cured". Which cancer, at which stage, what method, on how many people, how, etc. etc. No matter how interesting the article (don't get me wrong, this IS a very interesting article) you are misdirecting the readers and that's not cool I think.

thfuran 5y ago
>Which cancer, at which stage, what method, on how many people, how, etc. etc Presumably that would be in the article body, which can't all fit in the title.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  A better title is "New treatment improve survival rate of cancer patients". It's not a lie. If they have a few extra characters they can add the type of cancer (that is a very important detail) (perhaps the part of the body instead of the technical name), the name of the drug (it's nice to search info) or where the research was done (people love the human touch). The stage is very important, but perhaps it's too technical. I'd like to see if it's it was tested in humans/mice/vitro, many articles with a title that says "cure" are actually articles about a promising in vitro experiment. Also if they had a control group[1], because there are a lot of cures that are just an optimistic view of bad methodology. I think most of the times it's not on purpose, they just skip a few steps to make the research faster, but the steps are there to avoid repeating error detected in previos studies. [1] Preregistered double blind randomized controlled clinical trials that are good enough to be published in a serious peer review journal, or it didn't happen.
jonsen 5y ago
May I suggest you consult a dictionary for 'make sense of'.
adamsmith143 5y ago
It's not like this is Buzzfeed. Quanta's target audience is very much NOT people who would normally be interested in clickbait titles.
rbanffy 5y ago
I am no mathematician (I’m the OP), but to take this title literally is absurd. If not, we’d have discovered a way to have perfect knowledge of all events, past and future, and proved the whole universe is deterministic, and that it can be entirely represented by a tractable number of values.

Syzygies 5y ago

The Simons Foundation spends money; the money has already been made. Quanta Magazine wants readers, but not for ad revenue. Their metric for success is relative to their intended audience, which is interested in science.