THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICS

Lesson 1.1
Ged 102
Mathematics in The Real
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.
• 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 thoughts 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 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 unventional.
 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. Source: Space Telescope Science/NASA
•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 facilitate 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 (Vistru- Yu 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 ℤ can further be exploited using
mathematical operations.
•This landscape claimed complex numbers as the firmament 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 patternless 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]
Thank you for listening…