Monday, September 15, 2014

JovialJman - The Beauty Of Mathematics

"Maths stuff. Brain hurts already. Sadface." - OddballGreg

Do you find things really beautiful and don't know why? Do you hate this torturous subject at school that we call... dare I say it; "Maths"? Well they are actually related strangely. Lets talk about that.

In school, most students really hate that time of day when they have to go to their maths lesson. ("Trust me, I was one of them." - OddballGreg) They say it is tedious and that they will never use these things in real life. I agree that it does get rather monotonous, although, that can be down to the way it is taught, rather than because of the subject itself. There are so many ways in which maths can be really easy, useful and maybe, just possibly, even fun (ugh).

Most teachers in primary school tend to use the rote method to teach maths, which means that you will have to do it over and over until you know what to do. It is useful only if it paired with method teaching, which tries to get you to understand what it is that you are doing and why. (Notice that it should be together." The first thing is understanding that one mathematical concept can be written in multiple different ways eg, 1 + 2 = 3. In this case; what is on the left is the same on the right which is rather simple but you must understand that in order to do more advanced mathematics.

After you understand that these mathematical concepts can be written differently, you can start to manipulate larger numbers with far more ease, despite it all just being fancy ways of counting. Vihart on YouTube did an awesome video about it which is below this paragraph. I urge you to look at her channel as it is awesomely amazing. (Awesomely is a word right?) So if it is all fancy counting and you know how to count then you can do maths, (or at least some of it anyways).


Then there are ways in which maths can show us the beauty in things, and is part of the reasons that the beauty is there to start with. For instance there are pine-cones. Why is it in a spiral that looks so cool? How is it a spiral and is there maths involved? Well, since the pine-cone's scales need to grow in such a way that allows the previous and next scale to grow, it does so in a specific mathematical ratio. This allows each scale to have the optimal amount of space to grow without interfering with the other scales and results in the the spiral shape after multiple layers.

The one further back looks like a peacock. The peacock cone was taken from here.
Then there is this fancy thing mathematicians call the golden ratio. It is the ratio of 1:1.61803... This just means that you take a measurement of one thing and it will be 1.62 times smaller or bigger than the next measurement. People have found that the human body is largely comprised of this ratio with regards to beauty, such as the distance from your feet to your belly button, then from your belly button to the top of your head should be 1:1.62 if you are average, proportional person, along with the first digit of your finger to the second and second to the third.
Because everyone is a mathematician. Image gotten here.
Maths also has uses in every day life; if you want to know how much the dinner you just had is going to cost you, or if you want interest on your money at the bank. There is even cases that can help with happy hour in the bedroom, (you know ... when you are doing your homework). 

So if you want to check if you are beautiful by mathematical standards, (beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder though), or if you need to check how much those groceries costed you, remember maths is always there to help. If you liked this post or have any comments/suggestions on how to improve it or future posts, please leave a comment in the comments section down below, or write to us on Facebook/Twitter as we here at TCSA love to hear from you. Do you have any mathematicians as friends or friends that like to confirm they are beautiful, please share this with them as I am sure they will appreciate it. If you would like to show your support or want to see the latest posts as they come out, please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter with the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post and I hope you have/had a really good day and I shall speak again overmorrow.

Stay beautiful my friends.

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