ASSIGNMENT 3

APPLICATION OF
MATHEMATICS IN
DAILY LIFE
~Mathematics for
consumer
~Mathematics and
architechture

By :
Aizattul Anis Bt. Sobri
MS1013671459

Nur Hazliyana Bt. Abdul Mutalib

MS1013670000

DFP3
 Mathematics For Consumer
Shop Smarter

1. Practice simple math on something everyone needs to do such as grocery

shopping. We all have to shop, but some people save huge amounts on their grocery
bills by using math to plan their shopping trips. A woman featured in Southern Living
magazine drastically lowered her shopping bill by planning meals around which
meats were on sale at the supermarket. 

The most important mathematical concepts to use when shopping are ratios and
percentages. If you are trying to cut back on your bills, take a couple of hours to
compare the costs of some of your favorite meals. Add up the cost of the
ingredients of a meal, then estimate how many servings you can get from the
meal, and divide by that number. If, for example, chicken soup costs RM20 to
make ten servings, you will spend RM2 per serving. Lasagna, on the other hand,
might cost RM13 to make eight servings. Thirteen divided by eight is 1.625, which
means that a serving of lasagna costs about RM1.63. Using simple math, you can
easily compare different foods to determine how you can most economically serve
your household meals. As you work on the best use of your money, take time each
week to compare your grocery bills. Calculate the percentage you saved on
groceries each week by using sales, coupons and strategic menu planning.

Budget Your Travel

2. Travel planning is another great use for mathematics in everyday life.

Gasoline prices are a constant variable in modern travel, making it essential to
estimate your gas costs before taking a big trip. Say, for example, that you plan to
drive 1,000 miles over the weekend to visit family. If your car gets 27 miles per gallon
of gas and you plan to travel 1,000 miles, divide 1,000 by 27 to get the number of
gallons of gas you will need. In this case, you need 37 gallons. Multiply this by the
price of gas to find out how much your trip will cost in gasoline.

Streamline Your Work

3. Math also comes in handy when trying to maximize your productivity at work.
If you can easily measure the number of widgets or reports you produce per day,
make a simple graph or chart to track your improvement. If your job is more difficult
to quantify, calculate the amount of time it takes you to do certain tasks. Use
percentages to chart your improvement as you streamline your processes.

Mathematics and architechture

The first mentioned type of architecture Salingaros mentions in this quote is the
pyramid and here we have marked disagreement between experts on the how much
geometry and number theory the architects used. For example the Great Pyramid
was built at Giza in Egypt around 2575 BC for King Khufu. Much has been written on
the measurements of this pyramid and many coincidences have been found with ,
the golden number and its square root. There are at least nine theories which claim
to explain the shape of the Pyramid and at least half of these theories agree with the
observed measurements to one decimal place. This is a difficult area, for there is no
doubt about certain astronomical alignments in the construction of the pyramid. Also
regular geometric shapes were sacred to the Egyptians and they reserved their use
in architecture for ritual and official buildings. That they had a goddess of surveying,
called Seschat, shows the religious importance placed on building. However, no
proof exists that sophisticated geometry lies behind the construction of the pyramids.

One has to make decisions as to whether the numerical coincidences are really
coincidences, or whether the builders of the pyramids designed them with certain
numerical ratios in mind. Let us look at just one such coincidence involving the
golden number. The golden number is (1 + √5)/2 = 1.618033989 and an angle based
on this will have size arcsec(1.618033989) = 51° 50'. Now the sides of the Great
Pyramid rise at an angle of 51° 52'. Is this a coincidence? F Röber, in 1855, was the
first to argue that the golden number had been used in the construction of the
pyramids. Many authors have followed Röber, or produced even more elaborate
versions of how and the golden number have been utilised by the Egyptians. The
authors of however, suggest reasons for the occurrence of many of the nice
numbers, in particular numbers close to powers of the golden number, as arising
from the building techniques used rather than being deliberate decisions of the
architects. Arguments of this type have appeared more frequently in recent years.

Even if deep mathematical ideas went into the construction of the pyramids, I think
that Ifrah makes a useful contribution to this debate in when he writes:-

I once knew a professor of mathematics who ... tried to persuade his students that
abstract geometry was historically prior to its practical applications, and that the
pyramids and buildings of ancient Egypt "proved" that their architects were highly
sophisticated mathematicians. But the first gardener in history to lay out a perfect
ellipse with three stakes and a length of string certainly held no degree in the theory
of cones! Nor did Egyptian architects have anything more than simple devices --
"tricks", "knacks" and methods of an entirely empirical kind, no doubt discovered by
trial and error -- for laying out their ground plans.

The first definite mathematical influence on architecture we mention is that

of Pythagoras. Now for Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, number took on a
religious significance. The Pythagorean belief that "all things are numbers" clearly
had great significance for architecture so let us consider for a moment what this
means. Taken at face value it might seem quite a silly idea but in fact it was based
on some fundamental truths. Pythagoras saw the connection between music and
numbers and clearly understood how the note produced by a string related to its
length. He established the ratios of the sequence of notes in a scale still used in
Western music. By conducting experiments with a stretched string he discovered the
significance of dividing it into ratios determined by small integers. The discovery that
beautiful harmonious sounds depended on ratios of small integers led to architects
designing buildings using ratios of small integers. This led to the use of a module, a
basic unit of length for the building, where the dimensions were now small integer
multiples of the basic length.

Berger, in , makes a study of the way that the Pythagorean ideas of ratios of small
numbers were used in the construction of the Temple of Athena Parthenos. The ratio
2 : 3 and its square 4 : 9 were fundamental to the construction. A basic rectangle of
sides 4 : 9 was constructed from three rectangles of sides 3 and 4 with diagonal 5.
This form of construction also meant that the 3 : 4 : 5 Pythagorean triangle could be
used to good effect to ensure that right angles in the building were accurately
determined. 

The length of the Temple is 69.5 m, its width is 30.88 m and the height at the cornice
is 13.72 m. To a fairly high degree of accuracy this means that the ratio width :
length = 4 : 9 while also the ratio height : width = 4 : 9. Berger took the greatest
common denominator of these measurements to arrive at the ratios

height : width : length = 16 : 36 : 81

which gives a basic module of length 0.858 m. Then the length of the Temple is
92 modules, its width is 62 modules and its height is 42 modules. The module length is
used throughout, for example the overall height of the Temple is 21 modules, and
the columns are 12 modules high. The naos, which in Greek temples is the inner
area containing the statue of the god, is 21.44 m wide and 48.3 m long which again
is in the ratio 4 : 9. Berger notes the amazing fact that the columns are 1.905 m in
diameter and the distance between their axes is 4.293 m, again the ratio of 4 : 9 is
being used.

We mentioned above that F Röber believed that the Egyptians had used the golden
number in their construction of the pyramids. In the same work of 1855 he also
argued that the golden number was used in the construction of the Temple of Athena
on the Parthenon. Perhaps this work was very persuasive, or perhaps it presented a
romantic idea which people wanted to believe. Whatever the reason, it appears as
essentially an accepted fact today by most people that indeed the buildings of the
Parthenon achieved their undoubted exceptional beauty through the use of the
golden number. There appears little hard evidence to support this view, while
Berger's 4 : 9 theory, on the other hand, appears well established.