Usefullness of Mathematics in Everyday Life Essay -- Math Mathematics

Usefullness of Mathematics in Everyday Life G H Hardy once said that "Very little of mathematics is useful practically, and that little is comparatively dull". This statement is blatantly incorrect. Mathematics appears in virtually all fields in some form or another, and it is the only truly universal language. Even fields considered the opposite of mathematics, such as literature, are filled with different forms of math. Music is based very heavily on numbers, and even religions hold different numbers as sacred. Of course one could say that all these examples are merely basic arithmetic. What about higher mathematics? Can we really use algebra, probability, calculus or any other higher form of math in today's society? The answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!" Even higher mathematics has been and is still used in all sorts of fields, and it is the purpose of this paper to show just a few ways in which higher math has been applied to life. First of all, no discussion about the uses of higher mathematics in the real world would be complete without mentioning something that happened over sixty years ago. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to their invasion of Poland. To combat their new enemies, Germany quickly sent a land army to overrun France, and then prepared to take on England. Hitler's plan to defeat this small island was to stop all resources from getting through to them, effectively starving them into surrender. The Nazi army had a very effective weapon with which they could challenge the British supremacy of the waves, the U-boat. The German submarines wreaked havoc on the British supply routes, and Churchill knew that if a way couldn't be found to stop the German s... ...they owe the government and how to pay the least. Nearly all people on earth are affected by math everyday. Without mathematics, it is very possible that the Allies would have lost WW2 and we'd all be speaking German right now. Countless buisnesses would be alterred or totally gone if mathematics was not around. A world without math would certainly be a very different world to live in. Works Cited: [1] Davis, Donald M. The nature and power of mathematics. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c.1993. [2] Prabhu, N. U. Stochastic storage processes : queues, insurance risk, dams, and data communication. New York : Springer, c.1998. [3] Stewart, James. Calculus: Early Trancendentals. Thomson Learning. Stanford, CT. 2001. [4] PBS Online c.1996-2001 WGBH Educational Foundation. Update Nov. 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ <October 11, 2001>