When the assumptions fail

We make simplifying assumptions all the time. Assume the cow is a sphere. Assume a frictionless surface. Assume no air resistance. If you’ve ever taken a physics course, you’ve run into these at least once. Simplifying assumptions work because they get us an answer that is close enough to the “true” answer that we don’t need to do all the extra work of finding a more complex high accuracy solution. We like assumptions because they make our lives easier! But what happens when your simplifying assumptions turn out to be incorrect?

September 28, 2022 | Categories: 365 Days of Academia - Year four, My Research | Tags: academia, college, Education, experiment, learning, neuroscience, PhD, research, school, science, student, writing | 2 Comments