E-Letter responses to:

special/viewpoint: William Bialek and David Botstein Introductory Science and Mathematics Education for 21st-Century Biologists Science 2004; 303: 788-790 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Published E-Letter responses:

Back to the Future: The 1960s View of Statistics and Mathematics for 21st-Century Biologists

José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho, Luis M. Bini   (18 May 2004)

Back to the Future: The 1960s View of Statistics and Mathematics for 21st-Century Biologists 18 May 2004
José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho, Professor Universidade Federal de Goiás and Universidade Católica de Goiás, Luis M. Bini Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Back to the Future: The 1960s View of Statistics and Mathematics for 21st-Century Biologists	Bialek and Botstein (1) proposed that the recent advances in biological sciences require a new curriculum for young biologists, based on an integrative scientific view of biology, physics, and chemistry, with a strong background in computation, statistics, and mathematics. Based on our 15 years of experience teaching Quantitative Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for undergraduate and graduate students, we strongly agree with their diagnosis and that great advances would be achieved if their proposal triumphs. Unfortunately, we do not share such an optimistic view of improvements in curricula and their future impacts. Our argument is based on the Principles of Numerical Taxonomy, by R. R. Sokal and P. H. A. Sneath (2), published in early 1960s. This was the first textbook on the emerging field of numerical taxonomy, which was searching for a more operational, objective, and quantitative approach to Systematics, following a trend in ecology and evolutionary ecology that started in 1950s. Interestingly, Sokal and Sneath were aware that understanding the methods they presented in the book would be difficult and proposed a new curriculum to prepare young biologists for the advances in the years to come, similar to Bialek and Botstein’s (1) proposal. Forty years later, what has happened? On one hand, graduate and undergraduate programs in biological sciences usually have only relatively short "basic" courses in mathematics and statistics, not enough for general quantitative reasoning, and biologists think today almost the same way they did in the 1960s. On the other hand, a quick look at a new textbook in Systematics (3) clearly shows that Sokal and Sneath underestimated the background in mathematics and statistics that is now necessary to follow the advances of the last 40 years! Back to the future, new ideas to improve curricula toward more quantitative reasoning are still necessary. But, because of the slow rate at which curricula change, compared to the much faster advances in quantitative techniques and computer capacity, we may ask if quantitative reasoning is not doomed to be forever a "marginal" and restricted view, separated from the main line of empirical and purely descriptive biology. We must be prepared to always live in a "parallel" scientific world, just like the sorcerers of Avalon, hiding our gifts in the mist, but still guiding, usually at a distance and undercover, the destiny of the knowledge in our field. References and notes 1. W. Bialek, D. Botstein, Science 303, 788 (2004). 2. R. R. Sokal, P. H. A. Sneath, Principles of Numerical Taxonomy (W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1963). 3. J. Felsenstein, Inferring Phylogenies (Sinauer Associates, Inc., Publishers, Sunderland, 2004)