Teaching more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is a mantra repeated continuously in some circles. Maybe even by me.
Not to negate this, but listening to a couple of my favorite podcasts from Moira Gunn (TechNation and another BioTech Nation) about science and journalism and communicating science to the masses made me pause and ponder.
Perhaps it’s not just “science” we need to teach, but reasoning, thinking and the scientific method. We need to teach that to almost everyone. Why? So they can understand science and not jump to unfounded political opinions by “rounding off” popularly reported research.
In fact, much of business needs to run on the scientific method–observe, question, hypothesize, collect data, evaluate relative to the hypothesis, repeat at a new level.
The thinking part comes into play when you need to know when to use data and when the decision requires intuition based on either passion or experience rather than data only. Data helps you manage. Insight helps you succeed.
I use thinking processes from algebra every day. And the logical development of ideas I learned early from proving theorems in geometry was invaluable.
