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You are interchanging between a variety of different “sciences” to suit what current (and variable) point that you are trying to make, rather than using the same discipline as a constant reference.</p>
<p>In the sense of a systematic order of knowledge based on experiment and observation, math is not a science (at least in the same category as the physical and natural sciences). It is proof-based and theoretical. The physical and natural sciences do use math, but as a means of communication. The natural sciences, in a way, are the “best fit” lines that run through a series of data points (experimental observation) of which aren’t all located on the “best fit” lines.</p>
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<p>My first college “intro” physics semester class had somewhere around 400 formulas. Even if you memorize all the equations, you’ll still do poorly because a single problem might require 3 of those 400 and 2 that weren’t even included in the bunch because you have to derive them yourself.</p>
<p>Physics is not math. In intro math classes like the first calculus, it’s a different story. Memorizing some key equations before a test can bring success in a plug and chug.</p>
<p>When you say “there’s plenty of gray area in everything related to college,” really this is just a cliche. “90% of it is effort, 10% of it is a foundation of knowledge” is a generalization that doesn’t provide substatiation for how the cliche fits any specific case. The subsequent statement doesn’t clearly define what “getting through physics” means and essentially says nothing in particular. The last sentence of the paragraph misses the recurring point brought up by others, that physics is highly reliant on trains of deductive logic, of which memorization isn’t conducive to. Whether someone is a prodigy or not is irrelevant.</p>