The Diversity Of Mathematics In Everyday Life

Date: 20-22 February 1998

Weekend Programme

Lecture Synopsis

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FRIDAY 20th February

18:30 Bar / Reception
19:15 Dinner
20:15 Welcome
20:30 Mr. Andrew White :- "Raining Maths"
22:00 Bar open until 23:00

SATURDAY 21st February

08:15 Breakfast
09:00 Dr. Johnston Andrew Anderson :- "Dominoes , Dice And Football"
10:30 Coffee / Tea
11:00 Dr. J. Vernon Armitage:- "The Role Of Maths In General Education"
12:30 Bar
13:00 Lunch
FREE AFTERNOON - FOOTBALL MATCH MATHSOC v MAXWELL
16:00 Tea
16:30 Dr. J. R. Silvester :- "The Maths Maestro"
18:30 Bar
19:15 Dinner
20:30 Dr. Brian Bunday:-"Getting Married The Mathematical Way"
22:00 Bar open until 23:00 then party in basement

SUNDAY 22nd February

09:00 Breakfast until 09:45
10:25 Departure of those attaining church
10:30 Coffee / Tea
12:30 Bar
13:00 Lunch
14:00 St. Catharine's Session
16:00 Departure

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Mr Andrew White
Met. Office
"Raining Maths"- 'Mathematics And Weather Forecasting'

National meteorological services such as the U.K. Met. Office today use computer run numerical models as a basis for
weather forecasting . Designing these computer models and interpreting their results, involves many different applications of
mathematics .This talk will discuss some of them . Topics will be selected from the following the Platonic and Archimedean
solids , finite Fourier series , fluid kinematics and tensors , Poisson's equation , initial value problem and approximation theory.


Dr Johnston Andrew Anderson

"Dominoes , Dice And Football"- 'The Devil's Dice'

Why are there just five regular polyhedral ? Why do the patterned black-and-white footballs one sometimes sees on T.V.
have just 12 pentagonal panels ( or, why is carbon 60 the way it is ) ? Can one lay out a set of dominoes in a circle, so that
they match, domino-fashion , and what happens if you've lost some of them ? The talk will also offer a solution to the problem
known as "The Devil's Dice".


Dr J. Vernon Armitage

"The Role Of Maths In General Education"-'The Place Of Mathematics In A General Education'

The lecture presupposes that an education ought to offer two essential ingredients:-

(a)It should be a serious and orderly initiation into an intellectual , imaginative , moral and emotional inheritance.
(b)It should be 'useful' in the sense that it should equip students for work and for life in the community.

After a defence of those points of view with appropriate background quotations . The main theme is that mathematicians
( possibly uniquely ? ) unites the two views and then develops the place of mathematics in such an education . Examples of
mathematical ideas , problems and applications form greater part of the talk , with an emphasis on Hilbert's Criteria for a
'good problem' and some unusual application and asides about Lewis Carroll.


Dr J. R. Silvester
King's College London
"The Maths Maestro"- 'The ill-tempered Mathematician'

"The ill-tempered mathematician is a joke on the title of J.S.Bach's "48 Preludes and Fugues", whose proper title is "The
well-tempered clavier" .The talk is about music, and about the physics and mathematics of music, starting with how sounds
are made, and in particular frequencies, wavelengths, the speed of sound, and the harmonics of a vibrating body. From the
harmonics, one can start to try to construct a scale of notes for music, but it doesn't quite work out nicely, and one comes up
against the "Pythagorean comma".
The keyboard we use gives approximate intervals: the octaves are exact, but fifths and thirds and such are approximations to
the true intervals. The way the approximations are done is the "temperament" of the scale, and until about Bach's time the
temperament was such that certain key-signatures sounded so horrible that you couldn't use them. Improvements in the
temperament meant that all keys could be used, and so Bach's "48" consisted of two sets of Preludes and Fugues in each
one of the 12 major and 12 minor keys, which would only work if the keyboard, or clavier, was well-tempered.


Dr Brian Bunday

"Getting Married The Mathematical Way"- 'The Right Choice'

In choosing our marriage partner we have to choose without being able to meet or experience all potential candidates ( all
those members of the opposite sex that we meet after we have got married).How do we ensure that our chosen partner is
preferable to the others? The talk shows how to minimise the probability that this is so and gives a strategy for our courting
based on this.

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