3 ms·

Does anyone know of related work? There's the quantitative introductory biology efforts. There's widespread teaching of order-of-magnitude size, but it's very r

Does anyone know of related work? There's the quantitative introductory biology efforts. There's widespread teaching of order-of-magnitude size, but it's very rarely then leveraged to teach other topics. Any thoughts?

rramadass 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42421792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42421792
- mncharity 2y ago
  Thanks. Attempting a categorization, there's TechniqueHowTos and ThemedCollectionsOfFermis. What I've not seen is laying a foundation, of landmarks and relations and characteristics, in support a topical region of Fermiish mastery. Nor leveraging such mastery to then teach other topics more deeply. The common CollectionOfImportantNumbers are sort of landmarks, though there's rarely attention to thorough coverage or memorability. But they are rarely combined with the rest (ATP joules, vs bio bond energy being just above thermal noise, vs energy flux and budgets). Nor say an energy-budget perspective on history of life. Sort of a difference between "you can figure out an isolated Fermi on your own without simply being told the answer" vs say "preK-graduate, you can handle something like a PhD qualifying exam grilling". Between "can sanity check a number", and "have a feel for reasonable numbers", and "have a (necessarily quantitative) feel for the physical world". Between "how long to cook a turkey" and "thermal excursions in bio materials". Between a math-ish approach of "work enough problems and you'll start having a clue", and "outlier-insightful domain expert tutors the richly-interwoven tapestry".
  - rramadass 2y ago
    There are a few in "A Student's Guide" series from Cambridge University Press which might be what you are looking for, specifically on a) Dimensional Analysis b) Data and Error Analysis c) Numerical Methods - https://www.cambridge.org/in/universitypress/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/series/students-guides https://www.cambridge.org/in/universitypress/subjects/physic...

rramadass 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42421792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42421792

mncharity 2y ago
Thanks. Attempting a categorization, there's TechniqueHowTos and ThemedCollectionsOfFermis. What I've not seen is laying a foundation, of landmarks and relations and characteristics, in support a topical region of Fermiish mastery. Nor leveraging such mastery to then teach other topics more deeply. The common CollectionOfImportantNumbers are sort of landmarks, though there's rarely attention to thorough coverage or memorability. But they are rarely combined with the rest (ATP joules, vs bio bond energy being just above thermal noise, vs energy flux and budgets). Nor say an energy-budget perspective on history of life. Sort of a difference between "you can figure out an isolated Fermi on your own without simply being told the answer" vs say "preK-graduate, you can handle something like a PhD qualifying exam grilling". Between "can sanity check a number", and "have a feel for reasonable numbers", and "have a (necessarily quantitative) feel for the physical world". Between "how long to cook a turkey" and "thermal excursions in bio materials". Between a math-ish approach of "work enough problems and you'll start having a clue", and "outlier-insightful domain expert tutors the richly-interwoven tapestry".
- rramadass 2y ago
  There are a few in "A Student's Guide" series from Cambridge University Press which might be what you are looking for, specifically on a) Dimensional Analysis b) Data and Error Analysis c) Numerical Methods - https://www.cambridge.org/in/universitypress/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/series/students-guides https://www.cambridge.org/in/universitypress/subjects/physic...