The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness (2014)
Here's the nub of it:<p>> <i>"Not many psychologists are very good at maths," says Brown. "Not many psychologists are even good at the maths and statistics you have to do as a psychologist."</i><p>It's amazing -- well not at all amazing really! -- that the most successful people in any scientific field come from an engineering and physics background.<p>One of my favourite quotes is from Kelvin:<p>> <i>I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."</i><p>And ... mentioning Kelvin is a nice segue to this quote from the article:<p>> <i>"Just as zero degrees celsius is a special number in thermodynamics," wrote Fredrickson in Positivity, "the 3-to-1 positivity ratio may well be a magic number in human psychology."</i><p>Almost Sokal-ish in its attempt to borrow some relevance.  Zero C is not very special.  Zero Kelvin is!