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Comment by tylermw | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I know (I have a PhD in physics)--but I'd say the main reason statistics isn't used in most fields of physics isn't because it wouldn't help, but rather because most physicists don't know much about statistics.

And publication-wise, it's a bit of a chicken and the egg problem: since most reviewers are also not well-versed in statistics, they are less likely to accept a paper that uses statistical methods to confirm or reject a hypothesis. Thus, there's no institutional pressure for a physicist to learn statistics.

(And a graduate course in statistical mechanics does not count, saying that as someone who used to use that excuse)

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I agree with you but IMO, this could be a good thing sometimes. Avoiding statistics to some extent requires more deterministic experiments, where statistics are limited to quantum uncertainty or gaussian distribution. Otherwise there is probably some unknown mechanism to be revealed, and that’s exactly what the community expects physicists to do.

There's no such thing as a deterministic experiment. There are so many sources of uncertainty in all fields of experimental physics, and statistics can help quantify and even design better experiments. It's just a shame statistics has never become a part of the standard physicist's education.

I agree that statistics can help a lot in experiments and should be a part of standard education. My point here is, when physicists encounter uncertainty, they are encouraged more by the current culture to design a better experiment with deterministic theory to reduce the error, compared to analysing the results statistically. It would be better to have both, but it's not as bad as you might think for focusing more on the former one, at least for some fields I'm familiar with.

>And publication-wise, it's a bit of a chicken and the egg problem: since most reviewers are also not well-versed in statistics, they are less likely to accept a paper that uses statistical methods to confirm or reject a hypothesis. Thus, there's no institutional pressure for a physicist to learn statistics.

Not to mention that if experimentalists actually used statistics, they would have to describe their experiment in more detail when publishing for their statistical analysis to make sense. And in my experience, they really prefer to list as little about their experimental setup as they can get away with.

>And a graduate course in statistical mechanics does not count, saying that as someone who used to use that excuse

Heh heh. Most physicists I know would invoke "But we use probability in quantum mechanics all the time!"

> Most physicists I know would invoke "But we use probability in quantum mechanics all the time!"

I have absolutely heard that one before :-)

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