• Question: do you like maths?

    Asked by 624spea43 to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Maths is the alphabet of science, and with it we can form a totally different language. I personally love maths, as it is full of patterns, just like science and therefore can be used to interpret a lot of things in life.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      I find that maths presents some absolutely beautiful solutions and results. I wouldn’t say I have enough interest in maths to justify me studying it for its own sake, but as a tool it is extremely useful, and allows us to predict results with really quite astounding accuracy.

      It’s like asking a carpenter “Do you like chisels?” A carpenter might not know how to make a chisel, he may not be interested in making a chisel, but he knows which one to use, and how to use it!

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      I don’t dislike maths….I struggle with it sometimes because I can’t get my head around some of the equations we have been taught, but I do accept that it helps me out a lot!
      I always used to hate learning things like Pythagoras at school because I didn’t see how it would impact my life, but the more I learn about other things (did you know Pythagoras was used to find the distance between the Earth and Sun?) the more I understand why we need such things!

    • Photo: Rebecca Ingle

      Rebecca Ingle answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Without maths, I wouldn’t be able to do my awesome calculations that predict how molecules will react (with amazing accuracy!) without ever doing an experiment. Calculus is also really important in interpreting my experimental results to work out how fast reactions are going.

      If you’re doing A level maths, it’s amazing how useful things like eigenvalues and eigenfunctions become and from GCSE, you still use trigonometry to calculate things like the height your mirrors need to be in your experiments.

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