MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD

MODULE ONE
CORE IDEA
Module 1 is an introduction to the nature of mathematics as an exploration of patterns. It
is a useful way to think about nature and our world.

Learning Outcome:
1. To identify patterns in nature and regularities in the world. 2. To articulate importance
of mathematics in one’s life. 3. To argue about the nature of mathematics, what it is,
how it is expressed, represented, and used. 4. Express appreciation of mathematics as
a human endeavor.

Unit Lessons:

Lesson
1.1 Mathematics of Our World
1.2 Mathematics of Sequence
Time Allotment: Four lecture hours

MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD

Specific Objectives
1. To understand the mathematics of the modern world.
2. To revisit and appreciate the mathematical landscape.
3. To realize the importance of mathematics as a utility.
4. To gain awareness of the role of mathematics as well as our role in mathematics.

Lesson 1.1 does not only attempt to explain the essence of mathematics, it serves also
as a hindsight of the entire course. The backbone of this lesson draws from the
Stewart’s ideas embodied in his book entitled Nature’s Numbers. The lesson provides
new perspective to understand the irregularity and chaos of our world as we move
through the landscape of regularity and order. It poses some thought provoking
questions to draw one’s innate mathematical intelligence by making one curious, not so
much to seek answers, but to ask more right questions.

Discussions
The Nature of Mathematics

In the book of Stewart, Nature’s Number, he that mathematics is a formal system

of thought that was gradually developed in the human mind and evolved in the human
culture. Thus, in the long course of human history, our ancestors at a certain point were
endowed with insight to realize the existence of “form” in their surroundings. From their
realization, a system of thought further advanced their knowledge into understanding
measures. They were able to gradually develop the science of measures and gained
the ability to count, gauge, assess, quantify, and size almost everything.
From our ancestor’s realization of measures, they were able to notice and
recognize some rudiment hints about patterns. Thus, the concept of recognizing
shapes made its course towards classifying contour and finally using those designs to
build human culture: an important ingredient for a civilization to flourish. From then,
man realized that the natural world is embedded in a magnanimously mathematical
realm of patterns----and that natural order efficiently utilizes all mathematical patterns to
its advantage. As a result, we made use of mathematics as a brilliant way to understand
the nature by comprehending the structure of its underlying patterns and regularities.
Mathematics is present in everything we do; it is all around us and it is the
building block of our daily activities. It has been at the forefront of each and every period
of our development, and as our civilized societies advanced, our needs of mathematics
pioneering arose on the frontier of our course as we prepare our human species to
traverse the cosmic shore.

Mathematics is a Tool

Mathematics, as a tool, is immensely useful, practical, and powerful. It is not

about crunching numbers, formulas, and symbols but rather, it is all about forming new
ways to see problems so we can understand them by combining insights with
imagination. It also allows us to perceive realities in different contexts that would
otherwise be intangible to us. It can be likened to our sense of sight and touch.
Mathematics is our sense to decipher patterns, relationships, and logical connections. It
is our whole new way to see and understand the modern world.
 Mathematics, being a broad and deep discipline, deals with the logic of shape,
quantity, and arrangement. Once, it was perceived merely a collective thought dealing
with counting numbers, but it is now being understood as a universal language dealing
with symbols, arts, equations, geometric shapes and patterns. It is asserting that
mathematics is a powerful tool in decision-making and it is a way of life.

In the Figure 1.1 illustrated by Nocon and Nocon, it portrays the function of
mathematics. As shown, it is stated that mathematics is a set of problem-solving tools.
It provides answers to existing questions and presents solutions to occurring problems.
It has the power to unveil the reasons behind occurrences and it offers explanations.
Moreover, mathematics, as a study of patterns, allows people to observe, hypothesize,
experiment, discover, and recreate. On the other hand, mathematics is an art and a
process of thinking. For it involves reasoning, which can be inductive or deductive, and
it applies methods of proof both in fashion that is conventional and unconventional.

Mathematics is Everywhere
We use mathematics in their daily tasks and activities. It is our important tool in
the field of sciences, humanities, literature, medicine, and even in music and arts; it is in
the rhythm of our daily activities, operational in our communities, and a default system
of our culture. There is mathematics wherever we go. It helps us cook delicious meals
by exacting our ability to measure and moderately control of heat. It also helps us to
shop wisely, read maps, use the computer, remodel a home with constrained budget
with utmost economy.

Even the cosmic perspective, the patterns in the firmament are always presented
as a mystery waiting to be uncovered by us-the sentient being. In order to unearthed
this mystery, we are challenged to investigate and deeply examine its structure and
rules to the infinitesimal level. The intertwined governing powers of cosmic mystery can
only be decoded by seriously observing and studying their regularities, and patiently
waiting for the signature of some kind interference. It is only by observing the
abundance of patterns scattered everywhere that this irregularities will beg to be
noticed. Some of them are boldly exposed in a simple and obvious manner while others
are hidden in ways that is impossible to perceive by easy to discern. While our
ancestors were able to discover the presence of mathematics in everything, it took the
descendants, us, a long time to gradually notice the impact of these patterns in the
persistence of our species to rightfully exist.

The Essential Roles of Mathematics

 Mathematics has countless hidden uses and applications. It is not only
something that delights our mind but it also allows us to learn and understand the
natural order of the world. This discipline was and is often studied as a pure science but
it also finds its place in other areas of perpetuating knowledge. Perhaps, science would
definitely agree that, when it comes to discovering and unveiling the truth behind the
inherent secrets and occurrences of the universe, nothing visual, verbal, or aural come
close to matching the accuracy, economy, power and elegance of mathematics.
Mathematics helps us to take the complex processes that is naturally occuring in the
world around us and it represents them by utilizing logic to make things more organized
and more efficient.
Further, mathematics also facilitates not only to weather, but also to control the
weather ---- be it social, natural, statistical, political, or medical. Applied mathematics,
which once only used for solving problems in physics, and it is also becoming a useful
tool in biological sciences: for instance, the spread of various diseases can now be
predicted and controlled. Scientists and researchers use applied mathematics in doing
or performing researches to solve social, scientific, medical, or even political crises.
It is a common fact that mathematics plays an important role in many sciences. It
is and it provides tools for calculations. We use of calculations in other disciplines
whenever we are underrating some kind of research or experiment. The use of
mathematical calculations is indispensable method in scientifically approaching most of
the problems. In a similar way, mathematics, provides new questions to think about.
Indeed, in learning and doing mathematics, there will always be new questions to
answer, new problems to solve, and new things to think about (VistruYu PPT
presentation).

The Mathematical Landscape

The human mind and culture developed a conceptual landscape for
mathematical thoughts and ideas to flourish and propagate. There is a region in the
human mind that is capable of constructing and discerning the deepest insights being
perceived from the natural world. In this region, the mathematical landscape exists-
wherein concepts of numbers, symbols, equations, operations calculations,
abstractions, and proofs are the inhabitants as well as the constructs of the
impenetrable vastness of its unchartered territories. In this landscape, a number is not
simply a mathematical tree of counting. Also, infinite variables can be encapsulate to
finite. Even those something that is hard to express in decimal form can be expressed in
terms of fractions. Those things that seemed eternal can further be exploited using
mathematical operations. This landscape claimed complex numbers as the permanent
and even asserted that imaginary numbers also exist. To the low state negative
numbers relentlessly enjoying recognition as existent beings. The wind in this landscape
is unpredictable that the rate of change of the rate of change of weather is known as
calculus. And beneath the surface of this mathematical landscape are firmly-woven
proofs, theorems, definitions, and axioms which are intricately “fertilized” by reasoning,
analytical, critical thinking and germicide by mathematical logic that made them precise,
exact and powerful.
With this landscape, the mathematician's instinct and curiosity entice to explore
further the vast tranquil lakes of functions and impassable crevasse of the unchartered
territories of abstract algebra. For to claim ownership is to understand the ebb and flow
of prime numbers. To predict the behavior of its Fibonacci weather, to be amazed with
awe and wonder the pattern less chaos of fractal clouds, and to rediscover that after all,
the numbers in mathematics is not a "thing" but a process. Conventionally, we are just
simply made ourselves comfortable on the “thingification” of those processes and we
forgot that 1+1 is not a noun but a verb.

How Mathematics is Done

Math is a way of thinking, and it is undeniably important to see how that thinking
is going to be developed rather than just merely see face value of the results. For some
people, few math theorems can bring up as much remembered pain and anxiety. For
others, this discipline is so complex and they have to understand the confusing
symbols, the difficult procedures, and the dreaded graphs and charts. For most,
mathematics is just nothing but something to survive, rather than to learn.
To the untrained eye, doing mathematics is quite difficult and challenging. It is
ambiguous, for it follows a set of patterns, formulas, and sequences that make it more
demanding to do and to learn. It is abstract and complex ---- and for these reasons, a lot
of people adopt the belief that they are not math people.
Mathematics builds upon itself. More complex concepts are built upon simpler
concepts, and if you do not have a strong grasp of the fundamental principles, then a
more complex problem is more likely going to stump you. If you come across a
mathematical problem that you cannot solve, the first thing to do is to identify the
components or the operations that it wants you to carry out, and everything follows.
Doing and performing mathematics is not that simple. It is done with curiosity, with a
penchant for seeking patterns and generalities, with a desire to know the truth, with trial
and error, and without fear of facing more questions and problems to solve. (Vistru-Yu)

Mathematics is for Everyone

The relationship of the mathematical landscape in the human mind with the
natural world is so strange that in the long run, the good math provides utilization and
usefulness in the order of things. Perhaps, for most people, they simply need to know
the basics of the mathematical operations in order to survive daily tasks; but for the
human society to survive and for the human species to persistently exist, humanity
needs, beyond rudiment of mathematics. To safeguard our existence, we already have
delegated the functions of mathematics across all disciplines. There is mathematics we
call pure and applied, as there are scientists we call social and natural. There is
mathematics for engineers to build, mathematics for commerce and finance,
mathematics for weather forecasting, mathematics that is related to health, and
mathematics to harness energy for utilization. To simply put it, everyone uses
mathematics in different degrees and levels. Everyone uses mathematics, whoever they
are, wherever they are, and whenever they need to. From mathematicians to scientists,
from professionals to ordinary people, they all use mathematics. For mathematics puts
order amidst disorder. It helps us become better persons and helps make the world a
better place to live in. (Vistru-Yu).

The Importance of Knowing and Learning Mathematics

Why do we want to observe and describe patterns and regularities? Why do we
want to understand the physical phenomena governing our world? Why do we want to
dig out rules and structures that lie behind patterns of the natural order? It is because
those rules and structures explain what is going on. It is because they are beneficial in
generating conclusions and in predicting events. It is because they provide clues. The
clues that make us realize that interference in the motion of heavenly bodies can predict
lunar eclipse, solar eclipse as well as comets’ appearances. That the position of the sun
and the moon relative to the earth can predict high tide and low tide events affecting
human activities. And that human activities need clues for the human culture to
meaningfully work.
Mathematical training is vital to decipher the clues provided by nature. But the
role of mathematics goes clues and it goes beyond prediction. Once we understand
how the system works, our goal is to control it to make it do what we want. We want to
understand the mathematical pattern of a storm to avoid or prevent catastrophes. We
want to know the mathematical concept behind the contagion of the virus to control its
spread. We want to understand the unpredictability of cancer cells to combat it before it
even exists. Finally, we want to understand the butterfly effect as much as we are so
curious to know why the “die” of the physical world play god.
“Whatever the reasons, mathematics is a useful way to think about nature. What
does it want to tell us about the patterns we observe? There are many answers. We
want to understand how they happen; to understand why they happen, which is
different; to organize the underlying patterns and regularities in the most satisfying way;
to predict how nature will behave; to control nature for our own ends; to make practical
use of what we have learned about our world. Mathematics helps us to do all these
things, and often, it is indispensable.” [Stewart]