• Question: how often do you use maths to calculate things?

    Asked by anon-209488 to Verity, Sergio, Nick, Maria, David, Annette on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Maria Walach

      Maria Walach answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Almost every day – even when I don’t use maths, I write computer programs which use logic, so it’s very similar and I do that almost every day at work!

    • Photo: David Whitworth

      David Whitworth answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Most days, and stupidly its usually the most basic maths that I forget and have to use a calculator for. The harder stuff is done by computes luckily!

    • Photo: Annette Raffan

      Annette Raffan answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      Yup every day! Usually just the basic stuff. People don’t seem to understand why I have a calculator on my desk but it’s my best friend! I also love Excel too. Whether it’s lab finances, working out the water content of soil or how much nitrogen is in my plants, it’s all maths!

    • Photo: Nick Werren

      Nick Werren answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      ALL. THE. TIME.

      My life is pretty much maths.

      So in my PhD I discovered a new way to describe a particle using mathematics. Which was cool. The next step was to try and convert that maths into code so that a computer could simulate the stuff that the maths was describing (this is a bit like using a recipe to buy the right ingredients so you can see what the food tastes like).

      THEN after I’ve simulated my particle using code, I’ll use statistics to analyse my simulation and collect results. That will all get packaged up and put into a paper and THAT IS MY PHD!!

    • Photo: Sergio Adan Bermudez

      Sergio Adan Bermudez answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      I use it daily, and like Maria, I do not use the calculator itself, but programs that use maths in the background!

    • Photo: Verity Woodhall

      Verity Woodhall answered on 12 Mar 2019: last edited 12 Mar 2019 1:25 pm

      Every single day – I don’t even have to be at work! But at work I am constantly putting formulas into spreadsheets to carry out data analysis for me on large amounts of data (in tables with thousands of lines) and I’ve used maths at home when working out proportions of cake ingredients when baking cakes and the amount of icing to use to decorate them :-). Maths is all around us.

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