Math+in+life

Math is everywhere. Without realizing, we use math every day, and it plays a part in nearly all our daily activities. Every time we pick up the phone, use the internet, manage money, decide to take a risk, check the weather report, go to the doctors or travel anywhere, math plays its part.
 * Math in everyday life **
 * The **forecasts** you read in the paper are a result of solving complicated equations involving the way air, clouds and water move around the planet - part of an area of mathematics called fluid dynamics.
 * Math is involved in everything an **engineer** does, whether it is working out how much concrete is needed to build a bridge, or determining the amount of solar energy necessary to power a car.
 * The **housing market** is part of the bigger economic picture. How the economy is doing affects how much things cost, how much we are paid and how much the government spends - and math is used to monitor the economy and predict how it will change. A large part of the world's economy is invested in the stock market, and highly skilled mathematicians are employed to try to understand, and even **predict**, movements in the stock market.
 * **Business and industry** also need to make decisions about **risk and chance** and need mathematicians - or operational researchers - to help them with this.
 * **Computers** communicate digitally, sending packets of information across networks or wires, fiber optic cables and phone lines. The way this information is encoded uses math. Math is also used to create better **compression methods**, so that you can download mp3s faster, or that movie makers can fit longer movies and more special features on DVDs.

Forensic science is any branch of science used to analyze crime scene evidence for a court of law. All science uses math concepts and equations, and forensic scientists are well educated in mathematical concepts they use to analyze evidence from crime scenes. It is impossible to analyze forensic evidence scientifically without math. One of the main things crime scene investigators do is collect, measure and document evidence. Their data help forensic scientists perform calculations and determine the facts of a crime. Math makes it possible to show proof of what occurred during a crime in data and numbers. One area of math that is crucial to forensic science is taking precise measurements at a crime scene. Knowing the exact length of a shoe print could later help rule out crime suspects whose shoes are the wrong size, for example. Forensic scientists need exact measurements of everything at a crime scene in order to perform scientific calculations properly. Investigators spend a great deal of time measuring distance, weight, temperature, volume and other aspects of evidence to get the numbers correct. Forensic scientists use not only measurements, but proportions in their analyses. If a human leg bone is discovered in an unmarked grave, for example, forensic scientists use math equations to determine what proportion, or percentage, of a person's overall height the leg bone would be. Once they know that, they can determine how tall the person was and whether it was a child or adult. Proportions are one way math is involved in forensic science. Trigonometry, the study and measurement of triangles, is another common use of math in forensic science. Blood spatter analysts, for example, use trigonometry in their study of how blood from a human injury splatters on a wall or other surface. They draw lines from the victim's body to the blood spatter, then use angles and distances to calculate the third point of the triangle: the person who struck the victim, where the attacker was standing, how hard he must have hit the victim and more. Probability is a measurement of the likelihood that a specific event will occur under certain conditions. Forensic scientists often use probabilities to explain how likely it is that their findings are correct. For example, a forensic biologist who has compared a suspect's DNA to DNA from a fluid sample found at a crime scene will tell the jury the probability, or likelihood, that the DNA samples are from the same person: perhaps the probability the two samples did not come from the same person is 1 in 100 billion. Explaining findings to juries using probabilities is a common way math is applied to forensic science.
 * __ What Math Is Involved in Forensic Science? __**
 * __ The Facts __**
 * __ Measurements __**
 * __ Proportions __**
 * __ Trigonometry __**
 * __ Probabilities __**

At the end of a long day you finally go to bed. The Sun has gone down and you know for certain that it will rise again tomorrow, and so does every other living thing on Earth. The life of every animal and plant is governed by the movement of the Earth around the Sun, and every animal and plant is perfectly adapted to the environment it lives in. We humans try to understand the natural world around us using sciences like physics and biology. These sciences are written in the language of math. Physicists and astronomers use mathematical formulae to express the secrets of the universe and to send humans into space. Biologists believe that the secret of life lies in the genes and mathematical processes determine how genes get passed on and cause animals and plants to evolve so that they fit their environment perfectly. Our brains work because of the complicated interaction of neurons — so complicated that only math has a chance to describe it. Even the way the patterns form on a Leopard’s coat is best understood using math.
 * Our planet and us **

**"Mathematics to aid plastic surgeons** A group of mathematicians have developed a model which they hope will improve the outcome of reconstructive plastic surgery such as that carried out to restore damaged by trauma or cancer. In a typical procedure, surgeons cut a flap of tissue from a healthy part of the patient's body and transfer it to damaged area. However, they currently have to rely solely on their judgement and experience to decide how large the blood vessels in the tissue flap need to be in order to sustain its blood supply after the transfer. (...) Michael Miller, professor of surgery at Ohio State University, has been collaborating with mathematical modellers (...) and they have come up with a **simple differential equation model** that predicts whether the tissue transfer will be successful, based on the diameter of blood vessels in the tissue flap and the overall volume of the flap.(...) The model needs to be improved before it will be of practical use for surgeons. (...) The researchers believe such technology would improve the success rate of reconstructive surgery by removing the guesswork currently involved in the section of tissue segments for transfer. " From isquared, Automn 2009

**Rubik's Cube** The famous Rubik's Cube is an example of a group action, where a **permutation group**, in this case **the group of possible rotations**, acts on an underlying set, the cube's component subcubes.