The bane of many American physics grad students is teaching introductory physics to premed students. Due to the nature of med school admissions, one ends up with classrooms full of students who cannot afford to get anything less than an A+++ if they hope to make it to (Ivy League) Med School. Further, due to the nature of medicine, these students also approach physics as something that’s meant to be memorized by rote. Note to premeds: every time you ask your TA what the relevant formula is so that you can memorize it, you kill a fraction of that poor grad student’s soul.

Not all premeds are like this. In fact, it may be true that most aren’t. But it sure needles the hell out of grad students when they have to teach those that are. It’s no surprise then, that there’s an uneasy tension between doctors and physicists.

So you’ll have to excuse me when I stuck out my tongue and blew a big raspberry to the medical community after I heard about the following paper:

Quote

A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves. M.M. Tai. Diabetes Care, Vol 17, Issue 2 152-154

(Try removing the phrase “glucose tolerance and other metabolic” if you find that title daunting.) I encourage you to take a quick look at the abstract, whose stated objective is this:

Quote

OBJECTIVE–To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS–In Tai’s Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas.

Hint! If you replace phrases like “curves from metabolic studies” with just “curves,” then you’ll note that Dr. Tai rediscovered the rectangle method of approximating an integral. (Actually, Dr. Tai rediscovered the trapezoidal rule.) To top it all off, Dr. Tai decided to name this “Tai’s Model” and the medical community cited this paper 75 times.

*snip*

What I find really interesting is that the abstract notes that the Tai Model is significantly more accurate than other `widely applied’ methods. What could these other `widely applied’ methods have possibly been?