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The Numbers Game is a brief introduction into "certainty" and how scientists use statistics in "life sciences".

 

Maths is the basis of science and the only thing of which we can be reasonably sure. Describing the universe in terms other than using maths is flawed in principle – try describing or explaining what ‘yellow’ means without pointing at examples and how can you know that what you see as yellow is the same as what someone else sees?

You can explain ‘yellow’ in mathematical terms by quoting wavelength ranges (577-597 nm) for electromagnetic radiation. But that still doesn’t mean that you can be sure that your experience of yellow is the same as anyone else’s but biological science indicates that it ‘probably’ is the same as most other people’s.

Scientific proof is really reserved for maths, physics and chemistry where it is possible to consider certainty. In biological science, we have to cope with genetic variation and analytical variation which means that we cannot prove things in the same way so we use statistical probability to show the confidence that we have in our findings.

 

It's probable that you will find the following links useful (ScienceSnaps is not responsible for the content of external websites):

www.rgu.ac.uk/life/

www.eeng.dcu.ie/~tkpw/  

www.friesian.com/popper.htm  

www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol6/intro_probability.html  

mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.prob.intro.html  

www.cas.lancs.ac.uk/glossary_v1.1/prob.html#probability  

plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/  

teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html  

www.biology4kids.com/files/studies_scimethod.html

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The Numbers Game