  To a good extent, words can be understood as corresponding to patterns or
categories that appeared in order to represent concepts and structures that are
particularly important or useful in a given time and space. Words are
characterized by not being completely general nor specific, in the sense that
the same word can be instantiated or related to several different contexts,
depending on specific situations. Indeed, the way in which words are
instantiated and associated represents a particularly interesting aspect that
can substantially help to better understand the context in which they are
employed. Scientific words are no exception to that. In the present work, we
approach the associations between a set of particularly relevant words in the
sense of being not only frequently used in several areas, but also representing
concepts that are currently related to some of the main standing challenges in
science. More specifically, the study reported here takes into account the
words "prediction", "model", "optimization", "complex", "entropy", "random",
"deterministic", "pattern", and "database". In order to complement the
analysis, we also obtain a network representing the relationship between the
adopted areas. Many interesting results were found. First and foremost, several
of the words were observed to have markedly distinct associations in different
areas. Biology was found to be related to computer science, sharing
associations with databases. Furthermore, for most of the cases, the words
"complex", "model", and "prediction" were observed to have several strong
associations.
