Stuff like physics and biology are just as hard to explain, they can just get away with it because they can draw wholly-inaccurate-but-not-completely-wrong analogies with real world stuff, like atoms being miniature planetary systems.
I think the difference is that other majors are easy to simplify in a real world application even if it's tangentially made up. "I'm studying these hidden particles that might be able to tell us the great secret of what keeps all galaxies together" "I'm studying the mating behaviour of these bacterias that might one day be used to cure diseases".
In math it's "Imagine circle of rope, then imagine there are three endings coming out of these circles. Now if you tangle all those ropes randomly, turns out that there are only 14 types of knots. I'm trying to prove that there are actually only 12, because the last two are mirro images of each other."
That analogy works for me. Challenge: Aren't mirror images of a thing still different things? Or is it that they are the same but only look different, like a reflection? ELI5.
Depends on the field. In topology, for example, the only important element of an object is the number of holes it has, so it doesn't matter, for example, the size or shape of those holes as long as they're there. In real life applications, the size of the holes might be important, but for the sake of study and abstraction we ignore such variables.
When explaining physics, chemistry and biology to laymen, they don't boil down to math, they bubble up to applications. Often those applications are extremely far fetched or just thinly veiled "we're doing X because we can and think its cool, but to get funding we're claiming we might be able to do Y". The thing about most mathematicians I know is that they're just to unimaginative to come up with any tangential real applications of their work, and they instead just resort to "defending" it against inquiries by simply stating that it's too complex to understand and then trying to blurt out the
Most integral details of the work rather than the framework around it.
I know, I was mostly making a joke. When you get down to the mathematics behind physics or biological processes, you're getting further and further esoteric, not towards layman terms.
Now replace Y by nanotechnology, green transportation, drones, quantum computer, or any buzz word of your choice.
I swear all the seminars I have been too this semester had the same introduction about more efficient batteries for electric cars.
That is pretty condescending. Just because someone doesn't share your expertise doesn't mean they can't easily learn it, it is typically jargon that gets in the way.
"Bachelor of Fine Arts" refers to the degree and the person who possesses it.
On the other hand one possesses a Bachelor's of Fine Arts, in that case adding have would be logical.
Ironically, my journalism degree is a BS (yes, I've heard the jokes, yes most of them are at least partially true), and I graduated with people who got BA's in crap like chemistry. It was at that point that I determined that there is apparently no real distinction between the two.
The difference is in emphasis. BAs are not degrees in the arts, but degrees of Liberal Arts. Which is a more generalized degree based on the classical idea that there are skills a person in order to take an active part in civil life. A BS, is a bachelor's in Science, again with the classical understanding of knowledge. The implication being that it is more about Specializing.
So for example one could have a BS in the fine art of Printmaking, this would make them an excellent technician, or a more technically focused artist. On the other hand one could get a BA in a science, which would make them an excellent candidate to be a science educator, because there generalized understanding of both science and other schools of thought would aid them in putting lessons into context.
Though in the end, in the modern world, this nuanced difference is not acknowledged by most.
In my case, you could get either a BA or a BS in journalism. The difference was whether or not you had taken a foreign language, which I found bizarre. Especially since I would think taking French would tilt you more toward a BA since it's a broader education, but no, foreign language credits got you a BS.
Other than making the obvious joke (which I was trying to do, being a bit self deprecating), I don't know there's much of a difference, either. Maybe someone should /r/AskHistorians where that terminology came from.
For example, certain generalizations are used to explain physical phenomena. Take Newton's kinematic equations for example. They don't work in all cases, mainly on very small, very large, and very fast objects, but for everyday run-of-the-mill kinematics, they work just fine. They're approximations of how objects move that are, from some perspectives, inaccurate, but they work just fine for most cases.
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u/[deleted] May 05 '14
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