"Einstein once called pure mathematics “the poetry of logical ideas”. It is a poetry that has allowed astronomers to understand the movement of planets, and it has shaped our understanding of the physical world around us. Now it is set to reshape our view of cancer. From speeding up clinical trials to predicting cellular mutation and evolution, mathematical models are helping to transform fundamental ideas underlying the disease."
My seniors are working on their Internal Assessment that requires modeling data mathematically. Here is an article from Nature that describes how mathematical modeling is being used in the treatment and prevention of cancer. While math can often seem theoretical and abstract, it has many practical applications and can make our understanding of the world so much richer.
"Einstein once called pure mathematics “the poetry of logical ideas”. It is a poetry that has allowed astronomers to understand the movement of planets, and it has shaped our understanding of the physical world around us. Now it is set to reshape our view of cancer. From speeding up clinical trials to predicting cellular mutation and evolution, mathematical models are helping to transform fundamental ideas underlying the disease."
2 Comments
Rachel F.
8/6/2013 07:17:30 am
I think this just gave me an idea for a topic for my math IA. I was in a real stump, but then I read the Einstein quote and now I'm thinking about looking into how math affects our understanding of the universe. It's kind of general, I realize, but I'm kind of really into theories like that, so maybe this could work out?
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Yoder
8/6/2013 08:27:49 am
Rachel, I am glad this sparked some ideas for you! I think your idea may be a bit broad right now but a way to narrow it down to a doable problem might be to find a set of data representing some phenomenon you are curious about and creating a mathematical model that could be predictive.
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Sandi YoderI have been a teacher for 27 years, 14 of which have been in the Campbell High School IB program. Archives
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