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Empirical Wizardry
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Mathematics is like reading tea leaves, if you do it just right you might just predict the future. I started to appreciate just how awesome math can be during my 1st year chemistry courses (I completed a degree in Science at UNSW in 2016 majoring in neuroscience). The topic that did it for me was the gas laws. The equations (empirically derived, though I didn't know what that meant at the time) were deeply mysterious and interesting to me from the moment that someone explained to me that the law can be derived from the individual motions of gas particles. Although I didn't end up continuing my studies in chemistry, I became increasingly interested in statistical mechanics which offered deep theoretical insight to why the gas laws are the way they are. The problem was that my (lack of) understanding of the math essentially prevented me from really benefiting from self-study (although later on I'd learn that sometimes equations are just empirical, something I couldn't quite accept until I was lucky enough to run into Bridgman's book on dimensional analysis). Unfortunately, I found that my neuroscience major was tailored toward softening or even completely removing a vast bulk of mathematics, and equations were mere curiosities to be rote memorized for a few marks in an exam. As a result, I spent a good deal of time learning calculus on my own during undergrad and it was tough. To sum up this long winded story I have three aims on this forum (1) to help others in science and math where my knowledge permits (2) to promote the idea that science and math really are two sides of the same coin (3) to ask questions when I'm stumped!
