The US Census

I'm officially over half way done reading "The Lady Tasting Tea" and so far, it has been full of many aspects of math in the world. The most recent part of the book that I've read is about the event that is actually happening now: the US Census. This happens every year and everyone is required to fill it out or else a governmental official kind-of guy comes to your door.

Anyway, this confidential data is used to find the current population of a place. It also serves the purpose of allocating congressional apportionment, electoral votes allowed for each state, and government funding programs. I learned in government class this term that the congressional apportionment is how the state is split up for representatives based on the census' population for a specified area. A representative is assigned for a certain amount of people. States that are less populated have less representatives all together like Vermont. States with a larger population have more representatives for a smaller land area like California and New York.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the census information and data. They use the census to analyze pay and benefits, employment, unemployment, etc.

The US Bureau of Economic Analysis also uses the 10-year census for the planning of future sources of good economic growth.

All of these bureaus include many statisticians and mathematicians hard at work for the economic and environmental well-being of our nation.

I am thankful for the US Census because it shows that the government does care about the people and is trying to make sure we're all secure in the economy and that government officials are fairly distributed. But, it's good that the census survey is only taken every ten years so that the government is not taken too big of a part in our lives.

Math Love Song

I found this youtube video tonight. I was kind of creeped out at first because of the guy's outfit. There are weird sock puppet things that I still don't know the point of. Anyway, the guy is actually a pretty good singer and a good guitar player. Most importantly, he is very clever with his song. I think that he might've done it for a class project or something but I think it's still a decent but goofy song.

The song has math vocabulary but the singer uses those words in sentences for a love song about a guy that wants to get back with a girl. For example, "MULTIPLY my tears cause you're not there", "yes I may be NEGATIVE and I may be ODD, but EVEN you are hardly in your PRIME", and my favorite, "I want to enter your EQUATION one more time". I love how the guy uses important math words that are human characteristics as well like "negative" (negative attitude) and "odd" (weird).

Basically, "lylieesmeashley" is really creative. If I listened to this song without reading the lyrics, I might actually think that it was a real love song not based around math words.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale, "legendary English Victorian figure", was a very talented woman. She lived from 1820 to 1910. Throughout her life, she was a woman with missions. Florence was a writer, nurse, and a self-educated statistician.

One of her many missions was to force the British army to have field hospitals and supply medical care for soldiers in the field. Through much research, Florence found out that many deaths during the Crimean War were from either illnesses caught outside of battle or from wounds that were unattended. For showing British officers this data, she invented the pie chart.

She was such a great war nurse, Florence was dubbed "Lady of the Lamp":

"She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. " -The Times

Many people celebrate International Nurse's Day in memory of Florence Nightingale on her birthday. Also, the Nightingale Pledge is taken by new nurses in Florence's honor.

Florence liked to think of herself as manly, although she grew up in a rich family. She didn’t particularly have respect for women in general but she improved women’s lives dramatically through her work. The only two women she had passionate friendships with at a young age were her aunt and a female cousin. Florence preferred to have the friendship of strong, masculine men because that is who she was with for much of her life in her war work.

Later in her life, Nightingale did a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation starting in India. After much effort to reform the sanitary conditions of medical care and public health services, she reported that deaths of soldiers in India decreased from 69 to 18 per 1,000 men. After this event, Florence became the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society and then an honorary woman of the American Statistical Association.

After much hard work over several years to make a change in many aspects of the world, Florence Nightingale dies on August 13, 1910 during her sleep.

April Fools Nonsense

On April first, a man was arrested in Switzerland for claiming that he was from the future. I was looking on the 3quarksdaily.com crew's website today and found this article that one of their members had commented on. Robin Varghese, the commenter, said she "love[s] this image of the future". I personally, find it to be rather disturbing and creepy.

The young man dressed in strange clothing consisting of rather large amounts of tweed and a bow tie called himself "Eloi Cole" that day. He was digging around garbage bins at the Large Hadron Collider looking for fuel to put in his blender that he called his 'time machine power unit'. Police arrested him and took him to mental hospital where he disappeared. Before that, though, he claimed that he came back from the future to save the world from poverty and Kit-Kats. Scientists actually have a theory that the limitless power super particle they invented "somehow caused a ripple in time that prevented its own discovery."

When reading the first paragraph of this article, I was wary of whether it was really true or not. I figured that some crazy person just snuck into the facility and claimed he was from the future. But then there were scientists names listed and quotes from people. Then again, it could be like "The Onion", just all made up, funny stories. Also, there are several other websites about CERN and LHC linked from the article. Another thing that did not fit together with the other piece of the puzzle is that the man wouldn't tell authorities what country he was from. Well, it could fit together with the fact that maybe he IS crazy and was just making random stuff up. He said there aren't countries in the future. I'd say it's legit.

I'm a very gullible person though...

Another reason this event could've happened is if it was a jokester guy just acting this out on April Fools Day with his buddies from the jail facility that were assigned to tell everyone that Eloi disappeared.

On a serious note, this article has more to do with science (and morons) than math, but the book I'm reading, "The Lady Tasting Tea", describes that math basically needs science to exist and therefore is a very important piece in mathematics.

I think I've officially concluded that the article is a bunch of bogus bologna people writing stuff to mess with my mind. Maybe that's just to keep myself from being creeped out by the situation...

Flying is Way Overrated

In their sleep, many people have dreams of flying. There are different interpretations on why these dreams are had. People that have flying dreams usually wish that they could fly in real life. I, on the other hand, would rather not fly. If I could have one "superpower", I would want the ability to breathe underwater.

So, what's this have to do with math? Well, I believe that in order to fully understand mathematics, one must have perspective. One must be able to think outside the box and not follow the crowd. That's me. I was thinking the other day about how everyone would want to fly but I was thinking of things of why I don't want fly and tried to relate it to math.

For several reasons, I would rather not fly like everyone else wants to do. First of all, we (humans) already have the ability to fly in airplanes. If you think about it, flying in an airplane is basically the same thing as flying freely other than you wouldn’t be in the crisp, fresh air. In an airplane, you’re still in the sky, moving, and looking at the clouds. And you don't even need to flap your arms...

Second, if I could breathe underwater, I would be able to touch things like the aquatic animals and the plants. Flying in the sky, I wouldn't have anything to touch. Just the air.

Third, I just think it would be interesting to not just look but even be able to touch and swim along with underwater creatures. I could see and save animals caught in netting and other litter. In the sky, there's nothing to save, only things to look down upon from far away. Underwater you can see living things up close other than just birds.

Lastly, there's no real way to breathe underwater for long periods of time so if I could naturally just be able to breathe in the ocean, I definitely would do that rather than fly. Scuba diving tanks can run out of compressed air eventually so I'd like to just swim freely with out the heavy tank on my back.

Although dreams of flying are extremely loosely related to math, it's still something I think about and have perspective about while thinking outside the box, like mathematicians. Mathematicians must think of all possibilities for causes of problems in the world and must separate themselves from others' thinking and opinions.

High School Math

I feel like the book I’m reading is not meant for someone at my level of education. Rather, I think it is meant for college students that are working on a research project or have been assigned to read it for a mathematics-based or statistics class. Or, the book could even be written for older people that are pursuing a career in mathematics, statistics, or are just interested in the subject. David Salsburg, author of The Lady Tasting Tea, refers many times to remembering high school math courses or basic mathematic theories learned long ago.

Within just few pages, high school math is talked about twice in the sense that it was many years ago. The first reference is on page 69: “Nowadays we have the power of algebraic notation to get a solution. Remember high school algebra? If x equals the value in drachmas, then…” I wasn’t quite sure what a drachma was until I dictionary.com’d it. But that’s the neat thing about math. If there is a word problem that involves an object that the solver does not know, it doesn’t make a difference. All that matters is the numbers dealing with the object: speed, weight, height, length, volume, etc.

David Salsburg also talks about word problems. He considers high school algebra word problems “terrible”. People rowing downstream with the current, bouncing a ball, the length of a building’s shadow; these are all examples of high school word problems. Again, the author refers to the struggles of some students with these math questions:

“…and the poor student had to put those words into a formula and solve for x. The reader may recall going back through the pages of the textbook, desperately seeking a similar problem that was worked out as an example and trying to stuff the new numbers into the formulas that were used in that example.”

I have to admit that I have done that before but for the most part, word problems don’t bother me too bad. Salsburg seems to over exaggerate the great efforts it takes to figure out the answers. I’m sure it is that difficult for some people. Just like science experiments are hard for me, math is hard for others.

Anyway, David Salsburg may talk about certain events that are written for readers that experienced it a while back but I’m glad I still understand the material in his book for the most part. Much of it is written in “plain English” but some parts are really confusing, possibly for people with more education than I.

Math in War

I found an interesting article on the New York Times website in the opinion section. The article is called "Doing the Math on Mexican Drug Wars". I wasn't sure at first what the Mexican Drug War is but I briefly researched it and found Viridiana Rios' perspective in her writing to be very thought-provoking. She described how people using mathematics and a knowledge of social science can predict the movement and decisions of individuals as they live and interact with others in a society. Human logic, research, and personal points of view all factor in to the equation for forming an equation of the future activities of many people.

Applying this theory to a particular society can be difficult. At times, false patterns are found when randomness could be normal in the certain place. The Mexican Drug War is big news these days and it involves many people which means there are patterns in the interactions of the society. Viridiana Rios explains her travels to investigate this phenomenon.

Sometimes the way to solve catastrophic problems in a society isn’t by doing the obvious. Most people are not very good at math and therefore forget about it when trying to figure something out. Viridiana realized this when she traveled to Mexico and saw for herself the mayhem that the country’s citizens have been enduring. She considered her mathematics background and decided that the future of the drug war could be predicted and solved through observation and simple math equations:

“I have always wanted to contribute to Mexico’s well-being. I once believed that the way to do so was to study economics and political science and then work for the government. But I never expected that my means of trying to save my country would be math.”

The writer of the article describes how she has gone about the problem:

“The beauty of my method lies in its simplicity. With mathematics I’m able to codify and simplify reality to make it manageable and, more important, malleable. I represent each possible individual as an equation in which each term symbolizes tastes, goals, profession and abilities. All people get portrayed: Policemen, politicians, citizens and drug cartels start living in this mathematical world as planes and hyperplanes and, as in real life, they interact and affect one another, sometimes colluding, sometimes colliding, sometimes neither.”

Piece by piece, Viridiana works hard to use her knowledge of the civilization in her home country combined with her education in mathematics. She understands that every person is important in the future of the people as a whole as they interact with each other, hopefully soon in a more peaceful manner.