I’m the first to put my hand up and say that until very recently, I had a near crippling fear of maths. 

But as a scientist, I needed to bite the bullet and learn my shit, because I don’t want to be one of ‘those’ geologists who can’t be taken seriously because they fail to grasp the basic principles of maths. 

However I’ve been getting more and more irked by reading geochemistry papers where the authors are proposing trends in isotopes/chemistry that are actually just a function of pure good-old-fashioned mathematics!

For example:

A paper in which an un-named, but very eminent geochemist has shown a trend, which he suggests is a function of sediment being incorporated into the melt of a subduction related arc-lavas.

Seems reasonable, right?

NO!

I’m sure you’ll notice, as I did, that the denominator of the y-axis is the same as the x-axis. 

So essentially, this is a graph of 1/x vs. X. Such as this examples I just made in Excel (Where X=n*2):

Wow, a hyperbola! What a surprise! 

It’s not a geochemical insight if it’s just a function of the maths guys… Please think about what you’re doing before you do it. 

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