Explicit tracking of uncertainty increases the power of quantitative rule-of-thumb reasoning in cell biology.

ABSTRACT: Back-of-the-envelope or rule-of-thumb calculations involving rough estimates of quantities play a central scientific role in developing intuition about the structure and behavior of physical systems, for example in so-called Fermi problems in the physical sciences. Such calculations can be used to powerfully and quantitatively reason about biological systems, particularly at the interface between physics and biology. However, substantial uncertainties are often associated with values in cell biology, and performing calculations without taking this uncertainty into account may limit the extent to which results can be interpreted for a given problem. We present a means to facilitate such calculations where uncertainties are explicitly tracked through the line of reasoning, and introduce a pr

SUBMITTER: Johnston IG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4255194 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature