21 March 2013 - science convergence

I think that the low end of science and the high end are converging. Consider: Archaeologists are slowly learning that it’s better to look at all the data than at some of it. Don’t pick up the interesting bits and put them in a museum, pick up all the bits and run statistics. And meanwhile particle physicists at the Large Have-One Collider understand that you can’t build a box big enough to store all the data, you have to do your best to pick out the interesting bits. You simply must run the risk of finding only things that you look for. Someday the two approaches will merge into one and we’ll know who to vote for.