Mathematical Applications

After taking the college COMPASS exam, I discovered I had forgotten all the algebra I learned way back in High School. If I want to get a college degree, it looks like I have a year of catching up to do.

I told this to a co-worker who said, "Hey, we don't use math." For most of us, and that includes me, it's true -and here I am in a technical field. I remember my math teachers telling me, emphatically, that I and everyone else use math every day. In other words, math is like oxygen; math lifts us up where we belong; all we need is math. I'm still skeptical, and I think that we have had enough of things mathematical, but I look to Cambridge and see, that for some of us, it isn't so.

I read an article in Time magazine which reported how, by use of formulas and calculations, Cambridge mathematicians proved Jessica Alba has the perfect wiggle.

I suppose that by factoring such things as Ms. Alba's hip to waist ratio, which happens to be .7, the mass of her gluteal area (for us lesser educated types, gluteal means 'junk in the trunk'), the control exerted by the set of opposing muscles that attach from her hips to her lower back, along with some basic rules about body mechanics, a knowledgeable student of higher math can come up with such a conclusion. Furthermore, I can tell 100% of the Cambridge students, without even looking, that the needle on my geek meter is accelerating exponentially toward a maximum reading, and that the 'researchers' should get a real job.

Anyway, I still believe that, except for people working to build the next Space Shuttle, math is something the majority of us, and the majority of girl watchers, don't use.