• Question: Do you also like maths and english?

    Asked by needforspeed to Lewis, Jess, Ian, Divya, Clare on 13 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Jess Smith

      Jess Smith answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Yes! I liked maths a lot at school, and I end up using it a lot now. English I found really difficult, I was very bad at writing and grammar, but I enjoyed books and discussing them at school. Being good at English is a great extra skill for scientists, because you have to write reports- I have had to work very hard at it over the last few years!

    • Photo: Clare Nevin

      Clare Nevin answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I really hated maths haha. I didn’t do too badly at GCSE but dropped it as soon as I could, I found it really boring. You do need some level of maths to pursue a science career but it all becomes much easier when you are actually applying it to your own problems, like working out concentrations of solutions for your lab experiments, rather than looking at random numbers.

      I did English literature A-level along with the sciences and loved it. I liked the balance of having science and humanities. And like Jess said, it really helps with my writing as a scientist. If you ever found yourself wanting to get a career in science journalism, writing about current developments in medicine or technology for the public, then having that background in English would be really valuable.

    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      At school I was never a huge fan of maths; I could do it fine, but it was never as interesting as biology or history. However, maths is very important for work as a scientist. In the type of research I do there is a lot of fairly complicated maths used so we can work out what is happening in our experiments.

      I have always loved English and that is also really important as a scientist. I use my English skills all the time. Scientists write up their research (like you do when you do an experiment in class) and I also write a blog and other things.

    • Photo: Divya Venkatesh

      Divya Venkatesh answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Yeah I like both!

      I found high-level maths interesting but difficult in high school (which I think are A level equivalents, just before undergrad). Normal maths and statistics etc. are fine but I don’t find them that much fun.

      I really liked English/Literature (NOT grammar) but the thought of academically studying it seemed to me to take the whole joy out of it. I liked the thought of analysing say, how genetics can cause heart disease than Ibsen or Shakespeare’s plays (both amazing otherwise). I prefer to read in my free time 🙂

    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Yes! I liked maths at school but wasn’t as good as it as the sciences – I tried to do it at A level but struggled and dropped it to do 4 instead. I used to do a lot of recreational maths – complex numbers which you can use to make fractal patterns – these days you can get a phone app to look at Mandlebrot patterns ( if you haven’t seen the Mandlebrot set you should get an app ) but I had to learn to write a program to do the maths and leave it running for six or seven hours when I was a mere 16 years old. I’m not good at maths, my mental arithmetic is terrible but I like it, luckily in biochemistry you can get by on slightly flaky maths.

      I’ve always been a keen reader and usually have a couple of books on the go, I love looking at the history of language and the source of English words, I really wish I had a gift for foreign languages but several years of evening classes have told me to know when I’m beaten. My wife’s a linguist so on holiday I turn into a sort of elective mute – I know the pleases and thank-yous but if I ask the way to the loo I can’t understand the reply.

Comments