
Mathematics meets real life - jlhamilton
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/mathematics-meets-real-life/
======
keithpeter
Good heavens, I shall be watching this blog for the next few days to see how
it goes.

[http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/a-trip-to-watford-
gra...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/a-trip-to-watford-grammar-
school-for-boys/)

this is class stuff. I shall try the airport shoelace tying problem out on my
motley crews next week.

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mynegation
As for the right dosage of Warfarin, there are genetic tests that allow to
make a better initial guess at least in some cases. Genetics itself involve a
lot of math, and there's also economic aspects (healthcare costs) on top of
that. I hope to see more and more mathematicians and programmers participating
in healthcare.

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DanBC
The author is a mathematician, and thus used to thinking about percentages and
numbers.

Gerd Gigerenzer has a nice book, _Reckoning with Risk_ (or _Calculated Risks:
How to Know When Numbers Deceive You_ in the US), in which he calls for people
to stop using percentages and to use natural numbers numbers instead.

When you say that someone's risk has increased by 33% they usually have no
idea what that means, but they think it's scary. But if the risk used to be
0.001% then a 33% increase isn't much to worry about.

The book has many examples from real world medicine of people having great
disruption caused because they took medical treatment based on a faulty
understanding of the numbers. It wasn't just lay people making the mistakes
either; many doctors and consultants were getting the numbers wrong.

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lefthansolo
Hope it goes well. I don't think Romney winning or losing is as dire as dying,
which you very likely will not do, Tim. :) Good luck.

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marshallp
Focused ultrasound could have been used to do cardiac ablation as well, though
it's probably still in experimental stage. It's also noninvasive.

In general, focused ultrasound is the cure to a lot of ailments but is
criminally underfunded at the moment. It's a potential immortality device.

~~~
mindslight
How does it interact with the colloidal silver I am taking? What about my
magnetic wristbands? I'm also having problems getting to the clinic these days
because big oil stole my car that runs on water.

(Sorry, that's just how you're coming across.)

~~~
marshallp
[http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-
focused-u...](http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused-
ultrasound-surgery)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
intensity_focused_ultrasou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
intensity_focused_ultrasound)

[http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-
ablation-u...](http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation-
using-high-intensity-focus-ultrasound-mri-guided/)

(links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers)

It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed
discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on
here.

~~~
mst
If you write with sufficiently strong terms that you sound like you're blindly
evangelising rather than rationally advocating, the average HN reader is going
to go "eep" and adjust their prior expectation of your being right -way- down.

This effect is, I'm afraid, largely independent of whether you're -actually-
right or not - so assuming your goals include "maximise the number of readers
of your comment who go on to do some research about the technique", adjusting
the language you use to try and put across that they should go and research it
is probably a good idea.

Disclaimer: The above in no way indicates a judgement as to whether the
technique in question is sufficiently awesome to deserve the language you
used.

~~~
marshallp
I think you're making that mistake a lot of people in medicine make and what
separates them from the tech industry. They're huge pessimists because they
don't grok things like physics or computing and are trained/selected for their
ability to pass tests out of a textbook. If you put your geekdom "crawl entire
web/robot car/computers on every desk" hat on you'll realize you can run
circles around the current medical industry.

edit: I get you're trying to give advice. If I make the claims less exciting
no-one will bother. If too exciting, they think unfeasible. Getting the
balance right seems hard.

~~~
derleth
> If you put your geekdom "crawl entire web/robot car/computers on every desk"
> hat on you'll realize you can run circles around the current medical
> industry.

Then why hasn't anyone done precisely this?

