This is a machine transcription and therefore it may contain inaccuracies, errors, or mispronunciations. Notice an error you think needs changing? Please contact the Bitesize Bio team using this form: https://bit.ly/bsbtranscriptions

Into/Outro (00:04):
This is The Happy Scientist podcast. Each episode is designed to make you more focused, more productive, and more satisfied in the lab. You can find us online at bitesizebio.com/happy scientist. Your hosts are Kenneth Vogt, founder of the executive coaching firm, Vera Claritas, and Dr. Nick Oswald, PhD, bioscientist and founder of Bitesize Bio.

Nick Oswald (00:35):
Hello, and welcome to another addition of The Happy Scientist podcast. This of course is the place to be if you want to become a happier, healthier and more productive scientist. I'm Nick Oswald the founder of Bitesizebio.com. And today we will be drawing on the wisdom of Mr. Kenneth Vogt. Bitesize bio's Mr. Miyagi, and the founder of the executive mentoring company Vera Claritas today. And in all other Happy Scientist Podcast episodes, you get the benefit from Ken, Yoda-like, or Mr. Miyagi-Like words of wisdom to help you increase your performance, enjoyment and success in the lab. Today's episode actually has the best episode title so far of any in this, this series. It is, "I hate maths and organic chemistry and applied physics". Okay. Ken, what is that all about?

Kenneth Vogt (01:26):
All right. Well, I wanna start, start off with your side of the pond says maths. My side of the pond says math, singular, and no 's', but it all means the same thing for anybody who might be confused by hearing the other word,

Nick Oswald (01:41):
Or it is all the same for anyone who hates them.

Kenneth Vogt (01:45):
Well, there you go. You know, it's, it's kind of funny. I you know, I'm not a scientist, as I've said many times, but I am, I am actually quite erudite when it comes to math. So you might be thinking, well, I'm gonna give you a math tutorial today. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That's not what we're gonna do. I wanna talk more about the underlying foundation of this and why people have this math anxiety. And it's funny for the, you know, the person, the average person out in the world thinks, well, you know, all you nerds are the same and you're all good at math. And of course, so many scientists are saying, well, don't let me in with that. You know, math is frightening, you know, you know, to my mind to, to use a musical analogy, math is digital, whereas biology is analog.

Kenneth Vogt (02:37):
And for anybody, who's a musician out there, you know, that there's a big difference between the two and yet they, they end up at the same place. And, you know, the argument can be made that everything is made out of math. You know? So you're already doing math. It it's been a part of the science you do for a long, long time. And you've just been telling yourself that you're not good at it. Or, or other people have told you that. And it might be that somebody said you're not good at math or some group that you're part of is not good at math. Like girls are not good at math. Whoever said that, what a crazy thing, or, you know, or you know, or any other other group you can say they've been told or over and over again, they're not good at math.

Kenneth Vogt (03:22):
And I don't know how it is, was for you in school, Nick. But for me, I noticed that it became socially acceptable, even at a very young age, in primary school for people to say that math was hard and it's okay to not be good at it. When no one would say that about reading, no one would say that about, about social studies or about science or about anything else, but math you were allowed to not be good at. And well, all I did is foster this lack of confidence because you know, let's face it. What are we confident about? We're confident about the things we're good at. Well, you know, how do you, how do you get confident about something? Well, you go get, good at it. And often we don't start off that way and come on, think about it in your scientific career. Did everything just come easy? Did you have to work at nothing? Were there no, no rough patches were there no hard parts. Come on. You've you've been doing this all along.

Kenneth Vogt (04:27):
Now, another part of the, the psychological part about, about math is that we don't like to look bad and we fear we're gonna look silly. We're gonna look stupid if we're put in a situation where we have to demonstrate our lack of math skills, but you know, the, we have to get past that this, the fear of looking bad. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's middle school drama, you know, sometimes you gotta be able to laugh at yourself. Sometimes you gotta be able to say, you know what, I, I need to put in a little more effort. I, I, I need to try a little harder. And so, you know, that's what we're gonna talk about here.

Nick Oswald (05:09):
Yeah. And I think that one of the problems with maths in particular, and actually that does apply to organic chemistry and applied physics, is that when you look at it to begin with it, doesn't click straight away. It never will. You have to, it's not just something you grasp intuitively, normally you have to sit down and just give it some yourself some time to absorb it. So not like reading a book where, or, or something like that, you know, or learning a, even learning a biological concept. Most of it, you can see it on the page and you can start to understand it straight away. Maths, is from the beginning, just like, what the hell? And then you have to overcome that and get into it.

Kenneth Vogt (05:51):
Yeah. And it's very foundational, very fundamental. And it's, it's very structured. And I think that's gonna, that actually will speak to a lot of people who are scientists, knowing that there's a structure in place that you can rely on is pretty useful. So that's what mathematicians have they have driven to do over the years is to create that those foundations. And so, you know, that's where you get like theorems and axioms, you know, a theorem is you know, a hypothesis as it were. It's something that has to be proven, you know, and theorems are proven, you know? And so we used the proven theorems to to build more science. But the proof that it's built on is axioms. Axioms are just accepted principles that can't be proven. Now you might look at that at the beginning and go, oh, that's a crazy thing to base anything on the, yeah. Well guess what, take a look at biology. Biology is Axiom rich.

Kenneth Vogt (06:55):
So we're not asking you to call on anything here that you aren't, aren't already using. Aren't already doing, it's not actually that hard of a step from science to math or, and I'll, I use the same idea when it comes to things like chemistry. Yes. Chemistry takes a very different look at things than biology does. However, it's looking at the same things. So, you know, maybe, maybe you're looking through the front door and they're looking through the side window, but they're looking at the same thing. And, and, you know, a chemist would probably argue it's the other way around. They're looking through the front door and you're the one looking through the window. It's all, it's all already there. So, so the first thing you gotta do is take a look at theory versus reality.

Kenneth Vogt (07:49):
So you've, you've told yourself, or others have told you that math is dull, you know, and well, sure. It's dull if all you ever look at is just the raw theory of it, but if you start applying it to reality, math can get actually pretty interesting. And, and maybe you've had that experience already in your life. And like, for instance, math can be very interesting when you're investing or when you're gambling, you start doing the math on that stuff, and it starts to get kind of fun. Why? Because, because there's a, a practical use, there's an outcome and you get it and you like it. And the idea that, wow, we can save up enough to have a down payment for a house. All of a sudden that math is pretty fun to do, you know, because, because there's an end there that is useful to you.

Kenneth Vogt (08:48):
And so you, this is something that's always cracked me up. And people, even people that don't complain about math will complain about word problems. And, and to my mind, word problems were always the place where we finally got to, to make use of this math. It wasn't just theory. It wasn't just esoteric knowledge. It was, it was some practical application of this thing. And it's one of the reasons I, I personally got interested in Application Software because, you know, there's fundamental Software Operating System software and stuff like that. And I watched some guys get very excited about that, but like I wanted to see where the software would be useful, where it would touch people's lives, where it would, where it would accomplish something. So it it's the same kind of thing with this. When you start to realize there's math affecting my work in the lab, for instance probability and statistics, you know, statistics in the lab is very, very important.

Kenneth Vogt (09:49):
And arguably statistics is, is one of the more erudite regions of math. You know, it's it's of the harder areas. And I know some of you out there are growning right now. It's like, oh, "I hate statistics". You know, but think about how critical a part of your, of your career. They will be, how they can, how they can make you famous. They can make you a star. They, they make all the difference in, in a good paper. You know, when, when somebody says here's all the data we collected, but now here, here are the principles we've extrapolated from that. Here's what we have learned from that data. And to what you learn from the data is often right there in the, in the stats. So you, you gotta get in there and make application of that math, instead of just thinking it as just of this, this hard stuff, that's over there on the side, start seeing it as an integral part of your world and not fearing it as an integral part, but like, okay, here's a tool, a very powerful tool that I can use.

Kenneth Vogt (10:55):
And, you know, I understand it. It's fair to be afraid of powerful tools. You know, if you got something that can start a fire, you got something that can blow up. You know, you got something that can shoot projectiles. Yeah. You should treat that with respect and math is kinda like that, but, but when you need to start fires and you need to blow things up and you need to shoot projectiles, it's really useful. So, you know, if you didn't have that tool, you you'd really be, you'd really be shackled. You'd, you'd really be hamstrung. So you, so start to appreciate the value of the chemistry and the physics and the math as they apply to your, a job in your career and realize, okay, there, you you've taken on hard things before you can take on the next hard thing. Another thing you can look at with this is one of the, one of the things that's our, our initial experience with math is what do we do?

Kenneth Vogt (11:57):
We learn, we learn addition tables and we learn multiplication tables. And it's this bunch of memorization. And that memorization for most people is boring. You know, some of us were know mentally built in such a way that, that wasn't boring, but that's not true for most people. Most people found it boring, and then they just, then they just extrapolated that to all the rest of math. Well, all math must be boring, not so. The problem solving part of math is very interesting. It's it requires, requires imagination. It's a lot of like, say science. So, you know, when, if you're gonna look at it, it's just, oh, this is just a bunch of tables I have to remember, or yeah. Well, yeah. Who's gonna wanna do that and worse, yeah, here's a bunch of tables. I'm gonna forget.

Nick Oswald (12:48):
I'll tell you. I remember organic chemistry at university was, oh my God. You mean, we just have to memorize this stuff that has no connection to each individual. There's no logic. There's no pattern. I mean, there is eventually, but yeah, to begin with, you just had to remember all of these different reactions that happened and yeah, that, that's the sort of stuff that I didn't like, but having then later worked with organic chemists in the lab. Once you know the stuff, then it's really, you know, once you go layers in, you allow it to mature. What they can do is amazing. So yeah,

Kenneth Vogt (13:22):
It's, it's tools that they've learned how to use. And the fact is, if you've been working in the lab a while, you have learned to use an impressive set of tools that, you know, for, for a, an outsider looking in going, how could anyone, do you ever learn to use all those different things or, or learn all these different techniques, all that stuff they teach at Bitesize Bio, you know, but, but the fact is you do learn it and you learn it, cuz it's useful to you. So start recognizing that math is useful to you. It's gonna get you places. There's, there's really no other way to get to. And it's not about, well, you know, I have to climb a mountain now there's no road around it and I didn't wanna be a mountain climber. I just wanted to be able to drive around the road.

Kenneth Vogt (14:10):
Well, you are gonna climb some mountains. It's it's, you know, it, I'd love to tell you that life is gonna be easy and this is gonna be a walk in the park, but there are some hard things to do. There are some things you have to make commitments to and you may find like, look, when I, when I started down this road of, you know, scientific endeavor, things were coming easy to me. I got it. Things were exciting. I saw patterns that other people weren't seeing, it was just flowing for me. But when I got to math, the flow wasn't there. I was like, all right. So what do you do in a situation like that? Well, I'll bet you that, that, that is also a description of part of your journey in learning science. Some parts of it flow and other parts of it did not come easy at all.

Kenneth Vogt (15:05):
Well, what did you do? Well, here's what, here's what you di, i f you got through it and here's what you need to do. If you haven't got through it yet first off, get some help. Now, and the first person you can get help from is yourself. And you start that with just an attitude adjustment. If, if you're all doom and gloom about it, if you're, if your, your reaction is just, nobody could learn this. It's too hard. I don't have time. I don't feel like it. This is too boring. It's, it's too taxing. It's you know, and you, and you just keep layering pejorative after pejorative on it. Well, how is that helping? What is that doing for you? Is it giving you an excuse? Well, no, I don't have to learn math. Yeah. Right. Is that gonna work? You you're gonna have to do this stuff. It's part of the job and, and you know, here's, here's a reality of this. If it's a part of the job that just makes it, this is just a bridge too far, I can't do this. Well, then you're looking in the wrong career. Now, when I say that to you, I'm sure some of wait a minute, I love this career. All right, then, well, then do what it takes and adjust your attitude.

Nick Oswald (16:21):
That's interesting because I mean, the extension to this is, you know, as you mentioned statistics before, but you know a lot of people, and I'm not saying everyone, of course not, but a lot of people's a lot of biologists approach to statistics are slap dash at best. And I say that as someone who was like that in the lab myself, because I had to, I got other people to, to do it for me. And that was really bad. I mean, I should have taken respons. It was my responsibility to understand, fully understand. I mean, I had a working knowledge of the statistics that I needed to use and, and that was it. And, but as a scientist, you must know it and there's no excuse now. There's no excuse now for not doing the, the spade work to that's required to, to get enough of an understanding that you can be fully responsible for the statistical analysis that you need to do yourself. There's no excuse. There's so much around. That's one of the gonna be the, one of the major focal points for Bitesize Bio over the next year is trying to create is, or is putting out some great resources for for statistics and maths and experimental design and things like that. Because it's a, I mean, that is one of the, the slap dash attitude to that is one of in my view anyway, is one of the reasons for the reproducibility crisis and things like that, that we're seeing,

Kenneth Vogt (17:53):
Oh yeah, it's gonna be career destroying for some folks because they're, they're gonna, they're gonna phone in some statistics and then they're gonna get taken apart by, by peer review. And so, and people are gonna say they're being dishonest.

Nick Oswald (18:07):
Yeah. And then it gets all, or it doesn't get taken apart and they get published and then it's part of the literature. And so anyway, it it's really important. And there there's a great book actually. I mean, there are a lot of good books about stats and, and statistics for biology, but there there's a great book called Lab Math lab maths, or how we would call it lab maths, but it's a lab math that's written by an American what's her name? We've had our talk on, on Bitesize Bio before. Yeah, it's published by Cold Spring Harbor Press, it's Danny something, Lab Math, Cold Spring Harbor Press, Dany Spencer Adams. Her name is that's a great book for you know, getting you mainlining into exactly what you said, the, the practical application and the practical application of mathematics that you need to use specifically for your job. So that's the fastest way into that. That sort of cause the fastest way into you know, past the dry stuff and into the, what you need to know.

Kenneth Vogt (19:27):
And you know, one, one of the things we've, we've mentioned application now over and over again. Well, another, another word for application is action. That is you're, you're gonna actually going to use it. You know, the, a lot of times, if we're afraid of something, you know, something like math as an example, if you're afraid of math, your fear comes before you start doing the math, it keeps you from doing it. Well, one of the way is out is to start doing it. And when you start doing it, it's not as scary. Cause now you're seeing you, you're not afraid of what it could be. You're seeing the problem, whatever problem you're dealing with right in front of you. So now it's specific and as things get more specific, it's more manageable and you can actually get passionate as passionate about math or chemistry or physics as you are about biology. It it's, it's possible because look around, there are people that are passionate about those things, and I'm sure, you know, some scientists that are also passionate about chemistry and physics and math,

Nick Oswald (20:32):
And, and by the way, once you get, once you can start to get passionate about that, you will become more passionate about your biology because you'll feel more confident in the full gamut of knowledge that you need to do that thing rather than that that's my experience of it. I, yeah, I worked as a biologist, you know, molecular biologist and that you can be pretty much in the rails, working in just cartoon models in a way. And not really going into the hard side of the science. But then I went to work for a company. I've mentioned this in the podcast before where I was working with chemists and I was blown away by their precision of knowledge and and understanding of the math and stuff like that. And so I took it upon myself to, to expand my, my knowledge in chemistry specifically and what that transformed the, the way biology looked to me. Sure. It's definitely a thing that's worth spending the time on doing. And by the way, the way that I did it, and that was even 15 years ago, was I listened to some, I, I, you know, just got some lectures that, you know university lecture series from, I can't remember what university it was, but they, that time they were publishing with a podcast. And, and I just did, did the course and off I went

Kenneth Vogt (21:53):
Well, there you go. I mean, the, one of the things we can do then is get tutored, you know, and there's lots of ways to do that as you pointed out and, and in modern day, there's really lots of ways. And there are, there are YouTube channels on this podcast about this, and there are free university courses on this, and there are inexpensive paid courses available. And you, I mean, you can actually get a tutor or you can talk to the, the chemists in your own lab, if you had a lab like where Nick was and, you know, and get some pointers from, from people that are actually doing the work on the ground, you, you can read books, you can, there's so many possibilities. So this, this notion of, I didn't, I never got a chance to learn it before. Well, then take the chance now. You've never had more of a chance.

Nick Oswald (22:45):
Yep. It really is so worth it. It's very exciting to fill in those dark areas, those gray areas that you kind of understand, but don't really under, don't understand, you know, even I did two years of chemistry at university, but I'd forgotten it all by the time I got to that time in the lab, or I'd never applied it. So it never really had any life breathed into it. But so I kind of thought, yeah, I can kind of understand what that guy's talking about, you know, when he's giving the lab meeting, but I'd never really understand. And under you don't really put, breathe life into, into until you start using it in the lab. And so, or it still connects up with your everyday work. And once you start doing that, it's very exciting. It's really good.

Kenneth Vogt (23:25):
Yeah. For many people, their, their best learning method is hands on. So having taken the course or read the book, I mean, there's some stuff rattling around in their brain, but until they put their hands to it, they don't really learn it. So, and especially if that's your typical style of learning, it is imperative that you put your hands to it. And, and what Nick, you just said, something that was very, very key a moment ago. You may not ever get excited about the math, but you might very well get excited about the hole that it fills in the work that you do. So I don't, you know, you may not care that that you're doing statistics right now, but what I do care about is that I'm, and I'm wrapping up this paper and getting the final conclusions spelled out, okay, there's a, there's a piece of this that really matters to you. Well, math is just a tool. It'll get you there. And, you know, it's a lot better than trying to do it without tools. You know, it's, it's like eating your porrige with your fingers, you know, just the spoon makes all the difference.

Nick Oswald (24:33):
It's so easy to kid to yourself that you kind of know enough as well, really get, get immersed. You know, especially if it's something you've done in university. Yeah. I did those stats. I did that statistical you know, learned that statistical treatment in university so I can kind of, kind of know what's going on. That's fine. But no, it's much better if you just get in there, it's like going to the gym, you know what I mean? You can go to the gym and go, go once a month or you can really get in there and do the job.

Kenneth Vogt (25:00):
Yeah. And you can go there and just putter around and exactly. And not really get a workout. Yeah.

Nick Oswald (25:05):
It'll float all boats. So yeah, definitely worth getting over that hump. I'm not sure about that applied physics, but you know, Just kidding.

Kenneth Vogt (25:15):
You know, it's funny to, in, in my mind, applied to physics is like the, the most stripped down version of math application, you know, so, but yeah, I mean, and of course physics doesn't affect everybody's work in the lab, but, but it does have certain impacts on certain, certain techniques that you're using, for instance,

Nick Oswald (25:38):
Well, I mean, you, you do electrophoresis, a very simple technique. If you understand how current flows in a, in a solution you're in a much better shape than if you just, you know, just put it on and and leave it and hope it does the job.

Kenneth Vogt (25:52):
Yeah. I, I was, I was thinking about something completely different and it, so I'm glad you said that. Cause they're like, oh, whoa, I really thought about that. But I was thinking about using centrifugal force. Well, there's some, there is some basic, basic physics there, and man that's useful in the lab. They all things you do that involve centrifugal force.

Nick Oswald (26:11):
Yep. Definitely.

Kenneth Vogt (26:12):
So, all right, so the bottom line is, stop telling yourself you're not good at math. Stop telling yourself you hate math, cuz you know, you're just, all you're doing there is, is you're hiding from something, you know, you have to do so stop putting it off, stop fighting it. Use the tools that are available out there. Get some help if, if need be. And that, you know, you can get that help very privately by watching a video or listen to a podcast. You, if you're, if you don't wanna let any, anybody else know that you have a weakness in that area, you don't have to. On the other hand, if you can get over yourself and have a little humility, you can get, you can get up to speed very quickly by telling somebody that knows about it. Hey, I don't understand this. Can you help me? And, and you could be over something in, in a, in a week, in a day, in an hour, all something you maybe have been fighting your whole life and you got, you have the key to get out. So this is, this is, this is the way out. So I hope this helped

Nick Oswald (27:18):
That known/unknowns thing is that, that you talked about before, once you start for me one, I started looking at more into chemistry, suddenly the whole connection between math, chemistry, biology, and physics started to become more and more clear. And I was like, wow, that's amazing. It's just you, you can be. So, I mean, I, I don't know how I managed to go through my whole, you know, undergrad, PhD and first couple years post-doc, so blinkered as to what science was really. But anyway, that's, that's another story. Hopefully not, hopefully it's just me.

Kenneth Vogt (27:57):
Oh boy. I dunno. That sounds like a great episode there. The Blinkering of Dr Oswald!

Nick Oswald (28:06):
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it it's definitely anyway, can't say that enough. It's, it's definitely worth going outside the comfort zone and adding layers of skillset on there.

Kenneth Vogt (28:16):
Yeah. We've talked about comfort zone before too.

Nick Oswald (28:19):
It's all connected.

Kenneth Vogt (28:20):
It is. It is it so that's what I've got for today. Nick, anything you wanna add?

Nick Oswald (28:25):
No, I think that, I, I think that I said most of what I would have to say in that during the you know, during this, but again, it's one of the things that we realize at Bitesize Bio in general, that it is at least in our collective experience. You know, this is an issue until we go, we, we will be trying to, we're bringing some great people in to help us create materials that will help people to easily dive into the math and or organic chemistry and stats and stuff that will really help them to grow as a scientist. So maybe we can come back and do another version of the episode in a year's time. And we can tell all the people what what resources they can specifically go to, to, to do that. So. Okay. Thank you, Ken. That was an interesting one. Great title. Thank you.

Nick Oswald (29:22):
And yeah, and thank you to all the people who listened in as well. I hope you got some thing out of that. If you did, please come to facebook.com/thehappyscientistclub and tell us, and join us and follow us and we can interact with you there. You can tell us what you would like to hear and so on. Also if you are just, you you've just reached this podcast, cause it's near the top of the pile on Spotify or wherever, and you want to dive in deeper. Obviously they're all there on Spotify, but if you go into bitesizebio.Com/Thehappyscientist, you can see all episodes there. And I get more of a, an overview of what this podcast is all about. So that just leaves me to say thank you, Ken, for another great episode. Thank you. And we'll see you again. Next time.

Into/Outro (30:18):
The Happy Scientist is brought to you by Bitesize Bio, your mentor in the lab. Bitesize Bio features, thousands of articles and webinars contributed by hundreds of PhD, scientists and scientific companies who freely offer their hard one wisdom and solutions to the Bitesize Bio community.