• Question: What aspects of maths do you find most interesting and why?

    Asked by Chloe on 31 Dec 2019. This question was also asked by Andrea, Maddie, Eashan, Sam, samarachocolatee, ch3st3rh4rt, ashleigh, snowdrop56.
    • Photo: Lewis Griffin

      Lewis Griffin answered on 31 Dec 2019:

      I love geometry, especially applied to understanding the world. One explanation often leads to another – yes but WHY is it like that? But I find a geometrical answer can be very satisfying and not need more.

      The particular type of geometry I like the best is called differential geometry and it explains complex structures in terms of what they are like in their smallest pieces. The trick that Newton and Leibniz discovered was that if you make those smallest pieces impossibly small then what they can be like is never that complicated. Where it gets difficult, but fun, is gluing those small pieces back together.

    • Photo: Giuseppe Cotugno

      Giuseppe Cotugno answered on 2 Jan 2020:

      I like the most the process of mapping a phenomena to a mathematical models. This is the process of transforming words and ideas into mathematics and verifying that the model does behave as expected given the assumptions I made.

      I like this process very much because this is when mathematics is most helpful and when creativity can go unleashed. Sometimes another scientist might have already found a solution, and it is just a matter of tweaking it a bit to my problem. Other times it is better to come up with something new more tailored to the problem I am solving.

    • Photo: Maja Popovic

      Maja Popovic answered on 6 Jan 2020:

      I loved differential equations very much at school, not sure why.
      Limits of functions, too, trying to figure out where is the function coming to when the input is approaching some value (often 0 or infinity).
      Also geometry, finding some lengths or angles in different geometrical shapes (for example a diagonal or similar).

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