Physics teaches science. It doesn’t just discuss formal models for the world, but teaches testing of models. It emphasizes the importance of finding and knowing the limits of models. Unfortunately, no other major teaches science. A great illustration of this is your recommendation of microeconomics.
Not much of an undergraduate physics degree is honest experimental testing for fundamental models against reality. Possibly the answer is none except at good schools, but even at good schools the amount in other fields is zero. But a large part of the physics curriculum is about understanding the limits of approximations, testing them against mathematical models that are assumed to be true.
I would say “Except for Computer Science”, where testing theories is practically half your job. There are probably other exceptions, but that’s the one I’m familiar with.
I think bioinformatics provides a better introduction to science. We did experiments that produces results that didn’t match the book results and saw how hard it is to get experiments to reproduce.
We also had more statistics classes the the average physics course.
Physics teaches science. It doesn’t just discuss formal models for the world, but teaches testing of models. It emphasizes the importance of finding and knowing the limits of models. Unfortunately, no other major teaches science. A great illustration of this is your recommendation of microeconomics.
How much of an undergraduate physics degree is actually honest testing of models?
Not much of an undergraduate physics degree is honest experimental testing for fundamental models against reality. Possibly the answer is none except at good schools, but even at good schools the amount in other fields is zero. But a large part of the physics curriculum is about understanding the limits of approximations, testing them against mathematical models that are assumed to be true.
I would say “Except for Computer Science”, where testing theories is practically half your job. There are probably other exceptions, but that’s the one I’m familiar with.
CS teaches a very different skill and it teaches it very badly.
I think bioinformatics provides a better introduction to science. We did experiments that produces results that didn’t match the book results and saw how hard it is to get experiments to reproduce.
We also had more statistics classes the the average physics course.