Orlovska Lasma

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Essay #4

Is Mathematics a Tool or a Toy?

        

There is barely any person in the world who has never been in touch with mathematical knowledge. Most of the children become aware of the term “mathematics” itself in the nursery or at the elementary school, where a subject called Mathematics is introduced. Actually  Mathematics is a compulsory subject at elementary school as well as at secondary school and is considered to be one of the most essential fields of study. Some of the knowledge obtained during the Math’s course is directly related to reality and can be practically applied, but the rest remains an abstract knowledge, with actually no functional use, thus the meaningfulness of the mathematical knowledge can be argued.

First of all, in reality people have to study in order to reach goals set by themselves or some other authorities and in discovering areas of knowledge other than mathematics, mathematical knowledge serves as a tool, which relieves the process. Examples of such areas of knowledge, which are actually based on mathematics, are natural sciences – chemistry, physics. Even though, laws and formulas involve problem of knowledge, as they are drawn from a particular amount of observations, and it is not possible to know that this is the way it will always be, they do provide the opportunity to make calculations necessary for our daily life. For example, in construction process of some technical items it may be important to determine the centripetal acceleration. In the physics there is a formula that can be used for calculating it: ac = v2 / r . It can be seen that this formula involves two significant mathematical operations – division and raising to the power of two. Without the mathematical knowledge of how to do it, the formula in such a form could not be applied. Probably another way how to estimate the acceleration would be found, however, usage of the formula relieves the process. Another field of knowledge where mathematical knowledge serves as an important background is architecture. In fact historically, architecture was part of mathematics, and for a long time these two fields were indistinguishable. In Classical Greece and ancient Rome, architects were required to also be mathematicians. Architecture requires a strong grasp of geometry and this enables planning and constructing buildings according to mathematical principles. The presence of the Golden Mean (φ = 1.618), the ratios 5:3, 8:5, and square root of two proportion are found throughout all of architecture, and without knowledge in mathematics they could hardly be applied. Also in social sciences, such as economics and sociology, at least basic mathematical knowledge is necessary. For example, the economics’ program of International Baccalaureate includes also calculations of elasticity of supply and demand. When acquiring the topic, we were required to calculate percentages and use also others skills obtained during the course of Algebra, like adding, dividing, subtracting, as elasticity can be calculated dividing the percentage change in quantity to the percentage change in price. We become acquainted to graphs and curves also in the course of mathematics, but we use them for example in economics as well. Even though in the areas of knowledge which are more based on the emotions rather than reasoning and numerical data, mathematics play smaller role and can be practically applied in rarer cases, music which is actually based on the way of knowing through perception – hearing, also has links with mathematics., such as mathematical patterns in musical compositions (for example, Golden proportions and ratios, symmetry, tact measure expressed in mathematical means).

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Mathematical knowledge can be practically useful not only when researching other fields of knowledge, but also in our everyday actions. Most of the time people are not even aware that they are applying mathematical knowledge, they do not identify the methods used at a particular cases. However, an example of probably inadvertent practice of mathematical means could be situation when street sweeper scatters salt or send on icy and slippery pavements. Of course, not the highest mathematics are used, and the calculations are probably not even put down on a paper, but still when calculating how much salt or sand ...

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