The point of view of theoreticians of other disciplines

We work on real situations. Whether it is to understand a phenomenon or to answer questions asked by society or politics, the important thing is the question. For us, being creative is asking the right question and attempting to answer it. It’s not important if the answer doesn’t need the help of mathematicians (at first sight). But when we create and perfect our models, or when we adapt theories, we are in fact doing mathematics.

We spend a large part of our time in conceptualising a problem, in choosing or building appropriate models, in determining parameters, in understanding interactions between processes, in using data and experiments to compare results with reality, and in testing the limits of the model in order to better understand the mechanisms at work. You get the picture? Although we’re not mathematicians, we are much more than simple “users”; we are “model makers”. It is vital for us to have real interaction with mathematicians (See  Emerging mathematics and Numerical mathematics).