Remember Math?

Image by Helga from Pixabay

I think it was Barbie who said, “Math is hard.” (That is before she became enlightened.)

If you are just out of school, you probably remember math. For those of us who have been out of school for  a while, math is a distant (good or bad) memory unless we have chosen an occupation where you need it. I never needed it in any job, but I liked math in high school. I got through calculus and did pretty well. But I stayed as far away from the sciences as I could in college. I needed a couple of courses  as requirements so I took nutrition and astronomy. I might have dropped astronomy because I was failing for the first time in my academic life. Who knew it was a difficult math course?  Maybe I got it confused with astrology (LOL)

Thanks to my friend Don Grohman (who is a math and science person and former teacher) for much of the information in this post. (And please excuse the errant quotation marks. I copied and pasted and cannot seem to get rid of them.)

Binomial
This one might ring a bell from the days of algebra class. A binomial is a mathematical expression with two terms connected by a plus or minus sign. It looks something like this: 3×2 + 2y2. The word originates from the terms “bi,” meaning “two,” and “nomos,” meaning “part.” In contrast, a monomial has only one part, while a trinomial has three parts.

Exponent
In math, exponents are also called “powers.” An exponent describes how many times to multiply a number by itself. For example, in the case of 54, the exponent is the numeral 4 — meaning five is multiplied by itself four times. Using a term such as “exponent” is a shorthand in math. Saying “five to the fourth power” or “five with an exponent of four” is a lot quicker than listing out “5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 625.”

Fractal
This is a geometry term that indicates a complex, never-ending pattern. Everyday, recognizable items such as snowflakes, lightning bolts, plants, leaves, crystals, and tree branches can be fractals. This relatively new mathematical term was coined in the 1970s by Polish mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot from the Latin root fractus, which means “broken.”

Hypotenuse
In the 1879 Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance, the modern major-general celebrates knowing “many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse” by bursting into song. But what is a hypotenuse? Quite simply, it’s the longest side of a right triangle, which is found directly opposite a right, or 90-degree, angle. The word comes from the Greek terms hupo, which means “under,” and teinein, which means “stretch.”

Integer
An integer is just a whole number; it’s not a fraction or decimal. In other words, 1 is an integer. So are 205, 6,784, and -32. But 6.75 and 8½ are not integers. The word comes from the Latin terms in, meaning “whole,” and tangere, meaning “to touch.” It has similar roots to “integral” and “integrity.”

Polygon
One of the first things children learn about in school is the concept of shapes, and that’s what a polygon is — a figure with at least three straight sides and angles. Simple polygons include triangles, squares, pentagons, and even stars. However, shapes such as circles, hearts, and moons are not polygons because they have curves. The word “polygon” comes from the Greek term polugōnos, meaning “many-angled.”

Quadratic
A quadratic equation involves unknown variables with an exponent no higher than the second power. It looks something like this: ax2 + bx + c = 0. This equation can strike fear into the hearts of beginning algebra students, but learning how to solve this unlocks a world of mathematical power. The basic formula is used across almost every field of engineering, science, and business. The name comes from the Latin word quadraticus, meaning “made square.”

Theorem
While students (and adults) can get lost in a sea of numbers and symbols, math has always involved logic and reasoning, and theorems are the base of that. A theorem is a general proposition that can be proved by a chain of reasoning. Mathematicians use proofs that are previously accepted truths to logically establish that a theorem is correct.

Probably the most famous theorem is the Pythagorean theorem (a2 + b2 = c2), which is at least as old as 500 BCE. In this theorem, “a” and “b” are the lengths of the two legs of a right-angle triangle, and “c” is the length of the hypotenuse. When any two of the values of the theorem are known, the other can be calculated; and many other values can be determined, based on the Pythagorean theorem.

Here are some other “weird” math terms:

Fibonacci sequence
Named after an early Italian mathematician, the Fibonacci sequence is a string of numbers where each number in the sequence is the sum of the two preceding numbers. For example, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.

Chaos theory
Chaos theory studies how tiny changes in parts of a system can create enormous differences in the overall behavior of the larger system. The most famous representation is the so-called butterfly effect, which imagines that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one continent could trigger a chain of events that lead to a tornado on another continent.

Asymptote
In math, asymptotes can be vertical, horizontal, or slanted lines that graphs can approach, but can never touch. It’s the mathematical equivalent of walking toward a fixed object at a pace that gets gradually slower and slower. Although the object gets closer and closer, the person doing the walking will never actually reach it.

Wiener measure (yes, really)
Size matters in math too. But the Wiener measure, named after American mathematician Norbert Wiener, who died in 1964, is an indication of how likely it is for a continuous function (think of a graph showing daily fluctuations in stock prices) to lie within certain limits.