Mathematics

The invention and ideas of many mathematicians and scientists led to the development of the computer, which today is used for mathematical teaching purposes in the kindergarten to college level classrooms. With its ability to process vast amounts of facts and figures and to solve problems at extremely high speeds, the computer is a valuable asset to solve the complex math-laden research problems of the sciences as well as problems in business and industry.

Major applications of computers in the mathematical sciences include their use in mathematical biology, where math is applied to a discipline such as medicine, making use of laboratory animal experiments as surrogates for a human biological system. Mathematical computer programs take the data drawn from the animal study and extrapolate it to fit the human system. Then, mathematical theory answers the question of how far these data can be transformed yet still preserve similarity between species. Mathematical ecology tries to understand the patterns of nature as society increasingly faces shortages in energy and depletion of its limited resources. Computers can also be programmed to develop premium tables for life insurance companies, to examine the likely effects of air pollution on forest productivity, and to simulate mathematical model outcomes that are used to predict areas of disease outbreaks.

Mathematical geography computer programs model flows of goods, people, and ideas over space so that commodity exchange, transportation, and population migration patterns can be studied. Large-scale computers are used in mathematical physics to solve equations that were previously intractable, and for problems involving a third dimension, numerous computer graphics packages display three-dimensional spatial surfaces. A byproduct of the advent of computers is the ability to use this tool to investigate nonlinear methods. As a result, the stability of our solar system has been checked for millions of years to come.

In the information age, information needs to be stored, processed, and retrieved in various forms. The field of cryptography is loaded with computer science and mathematics complementing each other to ensure the confidentiality of information transmitted over telephone lines and computer networks. Encoding and decoding operations are computationally intense. Once a message is coded, its security may hinge on the inability of an intruder to solve the mathematical riddle of finding the prime factors of a large number. Economical encoding is required in high-resolution television because of the enormous amount of information. Data compression techniques are initially mathematical concepts before becoming electromagnetic signals that emerge as a picture on the TV screen.

Mathematical application software routines that solve equations, perform computations, or analyze experimental data are often found in area-specific subroutine libraries which are written most often in Fortran or C. In order to minimize inconsistencies across different computers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard is met to govern the precision of numbers with decimal positions.

The basic configuration of mathematics learning in the classroom is the usage of stand-alone personal computers or shared software on networked microcomputers. The computer is valued for its ability to aid students to make connections between the verbal word problem, its symbolic form such as a function, and its graphic form. These multiple representations usually appear simultaneously on the computer screen. For home and school use, public-domain mathematical software and shareware are readily available on the Internet and there is a gamut of proprietary software written that spans the breadth and depth of the mathematical branches (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, elementary functions, calculus, numerical analysis, numerical partial differential equations, number theory, modern algebra, probability and statistics, modeling, complex variables, etc.). Often software is developed for a definitive mathematical maturity level. In lieu of graphics packages, spreadsheets are useful for plotting data and are most useful when teaching arithmetic and geometric progressions.

Mathematics, the science of patterns, is a way of looking at the world in terms of entities that do not exist in the physical world (the numbers, points, lines and planes, functions, geometric figures——all pure abstractions of the mind) so the mathematician looks to the mathematical proof to explain the physical world. Several attempts have been made to develop theorem-proving technology on computers. However, most of these systems are far too advanced for high school use. Nevertheless, the non-mathematician, with the use of computer graphics, can appreciate the sets of Gaston Julia and Benoit B. Mandelbrot for their artistic beauty. To conclude, an intriguing application of mathematics to the computer world lies at the heart of the computer itself, its microprocessor. This chip is essentially a complex array of patterns of propositional logic (p and q, p or q, p implies q, not p, etc.) etched into silicon.