MODULE 1: THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICS: MATHEMATICS IN OUR WORLD

THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICS:

MATHEMATICS IN OUR WORLD
At the end of this module, the students will be able to:

 identify patterns in nature and regularities in the world;

 articulate the importance of Mathematics in one’s life;
 discuss about the nature of Mathematics, what it is, how it is expressed; and
 express appreciation for Mathematics as a human endeavor.

1.1 Patterns and Numbers in Nature and the World

An excerpt from Ian Stewarts’ “Nature’s Numbers (The Unreal Reality of Mathematics)”
Chapter I: The Natural Order. p. 12-22.
The Natural Order
The universe is full of patterns.
– The stars move in circles every night.
– Seasons cycle at yearly interval.
– No two snowflakes are ever exactly the same, but they all have six-fold
symmetry.
– Tigers and zebras are covered in patterns of stripes, leopards and hyenas
are covered in patterns of spots.
– Intricate trains of waves march across the oceans; very similar trains of
sand dunes march across the desert.
– Colored arcs of light adorn the sky in the form of rainbows, and a bright
circular halo sometimes surrounds the moon on winter nights.
– Spherical drops of water fall from clouds.
– Human mind and culture have developed a formal system of thought for
recognizing, classifying, and exploiting patterns.
We call it mathematics.
– Using mathematics to organize and systematize our ideas about patterns,
we have discovered a great secret.
– Nature's patterns are not just there to be admired; they are vital clues to
the rules that govern natural processes.
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– The regular nightly motion of the stars is also a clue, this time to the fact
that the Earth rotates.
– Waves and dunes are clues to the rules that govern the flow of water,
sand, and air.
– The tiger's stripes and the hyena's spots attest to mathematical
regularities in biological growth and form.
– Rainbows tell us about the scattering of light, and indirectly confirm that
raindrops are spheres.
– Lunar haloes are clues to the shape of ice crystals.
Patterns possess utility as well as beauty.
– Against the circling background of stars, a small number of stars that
move quite differently beg to be singled out for special attention.
Two types of patterns known to humanity.
– The fractals and the chaos.
– Fractals are geometric shapes that repeat their structure on ever-finer
scales.
– Chaos is a kind of apparent randomness whose origins are entirely
deterministic.
The simplest mathematical objects are numbers, and the simplest of
nature's patterns are numerical.
– The phases of the moon make a complete cycle from new moon to full
moon and back again every twenty-eight days.
– The year is three hundred and sixty-five days long-roughly.
– People have two legs, cats have four, insects have six, and spiders have
eight.
– Starfish have five arms (or ten, eleven, even seventeen, depending on the
species).
– Clover normally has three leaves: the superstition that a four-leaf clover is
lucky reflects a deep-seated belief that exceptions to patterns are special.
– In nearly all flowers, the number of petals is one of the numbers that occur
in the strange sequence 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89.
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There are also geometric patterns.

– The main shapes that appealed to mathematicians were very simple ones:
triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, circles, ellipses, spirals, cubes,
spheres, cones, and so on.
– All of these shapes can be found in nature, although some are far more
common, or more evident, than others.
Nature's love of stripes and spots extends into the animal kingdom. The shapes
and patterns of animals and plants are a happy hunting ground for the mathematically
minded.
There are also patterns of movement.
– In the human walk, the feet strike the ground in a regular rhythm: left-right-
left-right-left-right.
– When a four-legged creature-a horse, say-walks, there is a more complex
but equally rhythmic pattern.
Thanks to the development of new mathematical theories, these more elusive of
nature's patterns are beginning to reveal their secrets. It is giving us a deeper vision of
the universe in which we live, and of our own place in it.
1.2 Patterns and Numbers in Everyday Life
Money
1. How much change will you receive if you give P500 in paying the P141
Dau-Avenida fare?
Example 1.1
Solution:

2. Compute for the kasamak’s commission after harvesting 10 cavans of

rice, worth P230 each. 12% commission is given to a kasamak.
Example 1.2
Solution:

Measurement
1. Are you physically fit?
Example 1.3
Answer:
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2. How good are you in Math?

Example 1.4
Answer:

Statistics
1. What kind of assistance shall we give to Filipino teenagers?
One in ten young Filipino women age 15-19 has begun childbearing: 8
percent are already mothers and another 2 percent are pregnant with their
first child according to the results of the 2013 National Demographic and
Health Survey (NDHS). (http://psa.gov.ph/tags/teenage-pregnancy)
Example 1.4
Answer:

Constructions
1. How to build a strong bridge?
Different bridge designs can be found throughout the world. You can find
truss, arch, cable, beam, suspension and cantilever bridges in different
areas. The type of bridge used largely depends on the distance it must
cover and the amount of load it must bear. Geometric design is
important in bridge design. Properly used, geometric figures can create
extremely strong bridges. Though some bridges may use more geometric
concepts than others, all bridge designs evenly distribute weight for
proper bearing.
(https://sciencing.com/geometric-concepts-found-bridges-8711435.html)

Number Patterns
1. Arithmetic sequence – a common difference exists
2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, …
- What is the common difference?
- What is the next 3 terms?
Example 1.5
Solution:

2. Geometric sequence – a common ratio exists

3. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, . . .
- What is the common ratio?
r=2
a = 1st term
{a, ar, ar2, ar3, ... }
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- What is the next 3 terms?

Example 1.5
Solution:

4. Harmonic sequence – the reciprocal of arithmetic sequence

1/2 ,1 /4 , 1/6 , 1/8 , 1/10 ,…

In algebra, a harmonic sequence, sometimes called a harmonic

progression, is a sequence of numbers such that the difference
between the reciprocals of any two consecutive terms is constant. In
other words, a harmonic sequence is formed by taking the reciprocals
of every term in an arithmetic sequence.

1/a1, 1/a2, 1/a3,…

Non-verbal Reasoning
This involves the ability to understand and analyze visual information and
solve problems using visual reasoning. For example: identifying relationships,
similarities and differences between shapes and patterns, recognizing visual
sequences and relationships between objects, and remembering these.
(https://www.kent.ac.uk/ces/tests/spatialtest.html)

1. Which box comes next in the sequence?

Example 1.6
 MODULE 1: THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICS: MATHEMATICS IN OUR WORLD

Solution: To solve this question, there are three rules you need to
identify. Firstly, the circle is moving clockwise around the box, meaning
it will be in the top-right-hand corner in the correct answer. Secondly,
the circle is always white. Thirdly, and this is trickier, there is a
relationship between the circle and the square: when the circle is on
the right-hand side of the box the square is black, and when the circle
is on the left-hand side of the box, the square is white.
The correct answer is therefore A.
References

 Ian Stewart, Nature’s Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics, Basic

Books, 1995
 Levita P. De Guzaman et. al., Worktext: Mathematics in the Modern World,
St. Andrew Publishing, 2019
 https://www.kent.ac.uk/ces/tests/spatialtest.html
 http://psa.gov.ph/tags/teenage-pregnancy
 https://sciencing.com/geometric-concepts-found-bridges-8711435.html

Exercises
Solve the following problems.
1. Justin earned scores of 85, 92, and 95 on his science tests. What does he need
to earn on his next science test to have an average (arithmetic mean) of 93%?
(85+92+95+x)/4 = 93
(272 + x)/4 = 93
272 + x = (93)4
272 + x = 372
x = 372 – 272
x = 100

2. Joey participated in a dance-a-thon. His team started dancing at 10 A.M. on

Friday and stopped at 6 P.M. on Saturday. How many hours did Joey’s team
dance?
10 am Friday – 10 am Sat = 24 hours
10 am – 6 pm Sat 8 hours
32 hours

3. Callie’s grandmother pledged P500 for every kilometer Callie walked in her walk-
a-thon. Callie walked 9 kilometers. How much does her grandmother owe?
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Grandmother’s debt to the walk-a-thon = P500 x 9 = P4, 500

4. Michael scored 260 points during his junior year on the school basketball team.
He scored 20% more points during his senior year. How many points did he
score during his senior year? Score on his senior year = 260 x 1.2 = 312

5. A long-distance call costs x pesos for the first minute and y pesos for each
additional minute. How much would a 5-minute call cost?

5-minute call cost = x + 4y

6. A virus reproduces by dividing into two, and after a certain growth period, it
divides into two again. As the virus continues to reproduce, it will continue to
divide in two. How many viruses will be in a system starting with a single virus
AFTER 10 divisions?
a. Is the sequence arithmetic or geometric? Explain your answer. Geometric
b. Write out the sequence using blanks where appropriate. Fill in the first three terms.
1, 2, 4, 8, 16,32, 64, 128, 256, 512
c. Write an explicit formula for the sequence. an = ar^(n-1)
d. How many viruses will be in a system starting with a single virus AFTER 10
divisions? an = 1. (2)^9 = 512
a =1 r=2 ar n−1 = 1.210−1 = 29 = 512

In mathematics, a geometric progression , also known as

a geometric sequence , is a sequence of non-zero numbers where
each term after the first is found by multiplying the previous one by
a fixed, non-zero number called the common ratio . For example,
the sequence 2, 6, 18, 54, ... is a geometric progression with
common ratio 3. Similarly 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, ... is a geometric
sequence with common ratio 1/2.

7. A recovering heart attack patient is told to get on a regular walking program. The
patient is told to walk a distance of 5 km the first week, 8 km the second week,
11 km the third week and so on for a period of 10 weeks. At that point the patient
is to maintain the distance walked during the 10 th week. How far will the patient
walk during the 10th week?
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a. the sequence arithmetic or geometric? Explain your answer.

Arithmetic In an Arithmetic Sequence the difference between one term and
the next is a constant.
In other words, we just add the same value each time ... infinitely.

a. Write out the sequence using blanks where appropriate. 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26,
29, 32
b. Write an explicit formula for the sequence.an = a1 + (n-1)d
c. How far will the patient walk during the 10th week? Show all work.
a10 = 5 + (10-1)(3)
a10 = 5 + 27 = 32
xn = a + d(n−1)
= 5 + 3(n – 1)
= 5 + 3n -3
= 3n + 2
x 10 = 3(10) + 2 = 32
8. Which of the images A to E is next in the sequence?

9.
Which of the images A to E is next in the sequence?
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10. Which of the images A to E is next in the sequence?