Alas, I don’t think that study really shows much. The result seems almost certainly caused by the measure of mathematical methods they used (something kind of like by-character-similarity of LaTeX equations), since they mostly failed to find any kind of structure.
In other words, you think that even in a world where the distribution of mathematical methods were very specific to subject areas, this methodology would have failed to show that? If so, I think I disagree (though I agree the evidence of the paper is suggestive, not conclusive). Can you explain in more detail why you think that? Just to be clear, I think the methodology of the paper is coarse, but not so coarse as to be unable to pick out general trends.
Perhaps to give you a chance to say something informative, what exactly did you have in mind by “united around methodology” when you made the original comment I quoted above?
Alas, I don’t think that study really shows much. The result seems almost certainly caused by the measure of mathematical methods they used (something kind of like by-character-similarity of LaTeX equations), since they mostly failed to find any kind of structure.
In other words, you think that even in a world where the distribution of mathematical methods were very specific to subject areas, this methodology would have failed to show that? If so, I think I disagree (though I agree the evidence of the paper is suggestive, not conclusive). Can you explain in more detail why you think that? Just to be clear, I think the methodology of the paper is coarse, but not so coarse as to be unable to pick out general trends.
Perhaps to give you a chance to say something informative, what exactly did you have in mind by “united around methodology” when you made the original comment I quoted above?