# Tag Info

8

I would go with Physics. Physicists study the world using mathematics, while mathematicians study mathematics itself which is a construct that does not necessarily exist in the real world (Albert Einstein once said: "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."). ...

7

In general, there are two types of 'complexity' that are studied. Usually, when people talk about 'complexity', especially on the internet, they mean Santa Fe Institute style complexity. This is a vague and poorly defined concept that has struggled for a number of years without making significant progress. It uses pretty words, but has yet to deliver on any ...

5

I will deviate from the other answers and give more pessimistic response based on my experience as a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist that spends some of his time in a psychology department. In cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology (like in most sciences) you will never do mathematics in the definition, lemma, theorem, proof ...

5

Now that @ofri has presented a good argument for physics, I'll give a few arguments for the benefits of a course in maths, and particularly a math course that focuses heavily on statistics. There are many areas of psychology where a good understanding of statistics is very helpful. Statistics is particularly useful in psychometrics, mathematical ...

3

Thoughts on the paper The paper appears to provide a high level overview of the role of mathematics in cognitive science. I'm not a sufficient expert in the overall field of cognitive science where I'd feel comfortable to truly judge the accuracy of the overall synthesis that Andler (2012) provides. That said, much of the paper is about providing examples ...

3

I would say that the maths that are most useful in cognitive science are the ones that have to do with decision theory. So I would include linear algebra (with its matrixes, and "transition" or changes of state analysis), as well as probability and statistics, with their "expected values" and resulting decision trees. Computational and information analysis, ...

3

It seems like there is a fairly big literature on this topic. Wagenaar (1972) provides an early review of research. The author summarises around 15 studies. The studies involved generated random elements including letters and numbers of varying lengths. In all but one study, participants were deemed to be not good at randomising. As part of their review ...

3

Have you read this: Fishbein, M., Middlestadt, S. (1995) Noncognitive Effects on Attitude Formation and Change: Fact or Artifact? Journal of Consumer Psychology, 4(2),181-202. [DOI] Direct quote from page 187: Note that the psychology of the double negative is an essential part of an expectancy-value formulation (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein, ...

2

Thanks for sharing the article. I read the paper and what I take from it is a rather pessimistic view. He suggests that there is a crucial need for overarching proper mathematical modeling, but he makes it sound this is also a huge obsticle and we must wait (longer than a young persons academic career) to see the fruits of it. I'm coming from a theoretical ...

1

The problem is fundamentally due to the level of likelihood you allocate to an event, that is variable $e_i$, should not be measured using a bi-polar scale. Instead, likelihoods should be associated with a percentage, between 0 and 100%. This is a more natural unit, as a "low likelihood" result usually means that the respondent thinks the probability of ...

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