Talk:Outline of science

Human Computer Interaction subsection of Computer Science is All Wrong
Human-computer interaction – study, planning, and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers. Numerical analysis – study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to general symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). Algebraic (symbolic) computation – relates to algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expressions and equations in symbolic form, as opposed to manipulating the approximations of specific numerical quantities represented by those symbols. Software applications that perform symbolic calculations are called computer algebra systems. Computational number theory – study of algorithms for performing number theoretic computations Computational mathematics – involves mathematical research in areas of science where computing plays a central and essential role, emphasizing algorithms, numerical methods, and symbolic methods Scientific computing (Computational science) – Computational biology (bioinformatics) – involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems. Computational science – subfield of computer science concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problems Computational chemistry – branch of chemistry that uses principles of computer science to assist in solving chemical problems Computational neuroscience – study of brain function in terms of the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system. Computer-aided engineering – broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering tasks. Finite element analysis – numerical technique for finding approximate solutions of partial differential equations (PDE) as well as integral equations. Computational fluid dynamics – branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computational economics – research discipline at the interface between computer science and economic and management science Computational sociology – branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Computational finance – cross-disciplinary field which relies on computational intelligence, mathematical finance, numerical methods and computer simulations to make trading, hedging and investment decisions, as well as facilitating the risk management of those decisions Humanities computing (Digital Humanities) – area of research, teaching, and creation concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.17.173 (talk) 20:48, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

External links section removed
I just removed the external links section: WP:NOT. Especially for a list, I thought it was unnecessary. I'm open to discussion, though. —BryanD (talk) 20:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for outlines
Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The "History of" section needs links!
Please add some relevant links to the history section.

Links can be found in the "History of" article for this subject, in the "History of" category for this subject, or in the corresponding navigation templates. Or you could search for topics on Google - most topics turn blue when added to Wikipedia as internal links.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Lack of biochemistry under life sciences?
There's biophysics in there, so I see no reason why biochemistry shouldn't be. Any objections? 129.67.172.102 (talk) 15:28, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Annotations
Added a large number of annotations. Still a few missing, though.Marikafragen (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit
Added some general InfoSamuseal (talk) 10:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Prose moved from article
The following prose was added to the outline, but was not in outline format ("outline" is short for "hierarchical outline", a form of list). I moved it here in case any of it can be used for annotations.

This step is about taking the results of the observation and analysing them to find patterns or links to try to understand what happened in the observation. it then involves coming to an idea about what happened, and then going onto the next step. Example:
 * Hypothesis

HYPOTHESIS: "I believe that the more sunlight a tomato plant receives, the larger the tomatoes will grow.

This hypothesis is based on: (1) Tomato plants need sunshine to make food through photosynthesis, and logically, more sun means more food, and; (2) Through informal, exploratory observations of plants in a garden, those with more sunlight appear to grow bigger.

The hypothesis is your general statement of how the researcher thinks the scientific phenomenon in question works. this stage is when you refine it and think about how you can test it. it can be useful to see how others have tried in the past, looking up similar ideas in books or on the Internet. Once the prediction and hypothesis are developed, they should not be changed. this is and important part of the method.
 * Prediction

Continuing our tomato plant example, a good prediction would be: Increasing the amount of sunlight tomato plants in my experiment receive should cause an increase in their size compared to identical plants that received the same care but less light, if my hypothesis is correct.

This is the stage where the hypothesis is tested to see if it is correct or not. you need to do multiple tests under different conditions, as well as multiple copies of each test to eliminate errors or anomalies.
 * Experimentation

Again, with the tomato plant example, a good experimentation stage would involve possibly going out into the garden and growing tomato plants in several different locations, with several different plants in each location in case one had more favorable results for some other reason than sunlight. the results of the experiment must be recorded. a good way to determine what to record is to check everything that is relevant so you can establish connections later.


 * Experiment – methodical trial and error procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis.

The final step in the scientific method is the conclusion. This is a summary of the experiment's results, and how those results match up to your hypothesis. There can be two options at this stage. either you reject your hypothesis, possibly going back to the hypothesis step and begin again with another different hypothesis, or you can accept your hypothesis. This does NOT mean that the hypothesis is proved, but rather it means that it is supported by your set of results. what often follows, is that a researcher writes these results up and gives the 'papers' as they are sometimes known, to another researcher. Once many researchers have shown evidence to support a hypothesis or theory then it can be decided as proved, but this is often a difficult thing to decide. one definition says that the entire scientific community must agree that the results are in no way disputable: there is not possible way that there could be a situation in which the hypothesis doesn't apply. If any scientist has any reason to dispute a proven theory, he may to so by attempting to find results that show it and not correct in all circumstances. These claims are often hoaxes and as such the claim is often needed to be shown by getting many independent researchers to complete the same experiment to show it wrong.
 * Conclusion

Science is often misrepresented in the media.

Chemistry hierarchy seems confusing
The way the outline is currently written in the chemistry section, phytochemistry is the parent category to fields as diverse as chemical biology, chemical engineering, chemical oceanography, oenology, and spectroscopy. It almost seems as though phytochemistry accidentally split off part of the listing under physical chemistry, as several of the fields currently listed under phytochemistry could go under physical chemistry.

I propose the following changes, but if possible, I would like to get some discussion going before making them.
 * Phytochemistry is moved under biochemistry
 * Move the following areas to be categories directly under chemistry
 * Chemical oceanography, following the example of atmospheric chemistry (or perhaps both should be under environmental chemistry)
 * Polymer chemistry
 * Solid-state chemistry
 * Surface science
 * Move the following areas currently under phytochemistry to physical chemistry
 * Chemical physics - or possibly remove as this is listed under physics
 * Mathematical chemistry
 * Mechanochemistry
 * Spectroscopy
 * Remove the following areas from the chemistry outline
 * Chemical engineering - no other engineering disciplines are listed under a science category
 * Materials science - Wikipedia doesn't have separate articles on materials science and materials engineering and in practice, they're typically the same, so I think we should remove an engineering field from a science discipline for consistency. Also, I think it would be inaccurate to consider materials science a field of chemistry, as it does not rely more on chemistry than physics or its own formalism.
 * Nanotechnology - this seems like it should be listed as an applied science, or at least listed under other fields like physics and engineering as well
 * Statistical mechanics - this is a branch of physics. I am moving that there

I'm not sure what do with oenology. Could it go under agronomy in applied sciences?

Also, photochemistry seems like it should go under physical chemistry. Mred64 (talk) 04:21, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Just 2 quick notes, not a thorough reply:
 * 1. See Outline of chemistry, and Outline of physical science for other lists that may help, or may also need correcting.
 * 2. This edit was where the phytochemistry entry became a parent-topic. You may wish to ask that editor to comment - it looks like they were doing a lot of work on this outline, during a week in May 2012.
 * Hope that helps. –Quiddity (talk) 01:01, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the parent entry that followed phytochemistry was accidentally erased, which inadvertently turned phytochemistry into a parent. I put the parent entry back. Mred64, your proposed changes look good to me. Feel free to adjust the taxonomy as you see fit. Oenology isn't a branch of horticulture, as it has nothing to do with cultivating (growing) plants. I've copied it to Food science, which is on the same branch as horticulture. But it looks like oenology is also a branch of chemistry: the chemistry of wine. Winemaking is a chemical process. The Transhumanist 17:29, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that parent category makes more sense. It looks like chemistry is the only science that has a category of "multidisciplinary fields involving X". It just strikes me as a bit odd to only have a classification like that for chemistry. A decent number of multidisciplinary fields are listed directly under the multiple relevant fields. Would it be worth putting a multidisciplinary science field directly under natural science? Although that seems like it could be a hassle to organize. I think oenology just seems really applied to put under chemistry, although we also flavor chemistry listed, so maybe that's not a big deal. Mred64 (talk) 00:11, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Portal technology for featured candidacy
I've nominated Portal:Technology for featured candidacy. Comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Technology. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Portal:Technology

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Formal science issues
Two points to consider:

1) Other major divisions (natural, social, applied ) have been moved to separate outline pages. Shouldn't the same be done with formal science? Right now, the article seems very unbalanced in terms of the number of words on each topic.

2) Operations research appears in two places: once as a branch of systems science, and once as a branch of optimisation, which, in turn, is shown as a branch of applied mathematics. Two issues here: First, as far as the choice between applied mathematics and systems science, the first seems to me the more natural choice, but that may just reflect my own narrow perspective. In any case, it shouldn't be in both. Second, it seems very strange to call operations research a branch of optimisation. If anything, it's the other way around. But I think that optimisation is simply a description of what operations research does.

I'm tempted to just be bold and fix these things as I think they ought to be, but I'm going to hold off until some other views are heard from. This is not really my area of expertise, and an outline should reflect a consensus view. Davidhof (talk) 04:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Done.--Cswquz (talk) 10:13, 17 May 2019 (UTC)