![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Applied Mathematics
Apr. 17th, 2018 10:24 amWe had an enjoyable (but short) visit this weekend by my daughter Rachel and her younger son Nico. Rachel has become active in a Morris Dancing group in Cambridge and therefore needs to provide herself with dancing clogs and a dance dress in the group's style for when they perform in public, which is likely to be at fairs, festivals and the like over the summer. I offered to make the dress as an early birthday present and then she found that the clog factory in Mytholmroyd (en route from Halifax to Todmorden) could provide exactly the clogs she needed. The Morris Dancing organiser provided me with fabric, a sample dress to show me what it ought to look like and a (rather small) paper pattern of the design.
I have often felt glad that I studied Maths, whether when keeping accounts, calculating times, distances and fuel consumption, or working out how much food we need for a bulk order, but dress-making has always seemed to me to be an excellent example of how to use applied maths. You have to take measurements in 2D and map them onto a mental model in 3D. Paper patterns incorporate little tricks for the unwary, like giving you a diagram where some pieces are cut from a single thickness of fabric and others from a double thickness with one side of the pattern butting up to the fold: there are further levels of complexity when the fabric has a one-way pattern ..... And if the pattern is several sizes smaller or bigger than the person whose garment you are working on, you need to visualise the measurements which will help you to change the shape to suit them, which will not just be changing the main length and width.
Anyway, Rachel collected the clogs, which fitted perfectly, in the time between one train and the next, and she and Nico arrived at our gate by taxi at exactly the same time as we did on foot, coming back from picking up supplies from Tod (me) and leafletting (Mick). Fortunately I had done my job effectively, so the tacked-together dress fitted Rachel well and simply needed final adjustment on the hem.
One of my Christmas presents was the Lego 'Women of NASA' collection, which features Astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jamison, Astronomer Nancy Grace Roman who was largely responsible for planning the Hubble Space Telescope and Computer Scientist Margaret Hamilton who led the team that developed the on-board flight software for the Apollo Moon-landing programme. With Nico's enthusiastic assistance, these are now constructed and stand to one side of my Mac, so I see them whenever I am working on the computer. (a great bunch of women who also appreciated applied mathematics).
I have often felt glad that I studied Maths, whether when keeping accounts, calculating times, distances and fuel consumption, or working out how much food we need for a bulk order, but dress-making has always seemed to me to be an excellent example of how to use applied maths. You have to take measurements in 2D and map them onto a mental model in 3D. Paper patterns incorporate little tricks for the unwary, like giving you a diagram where some pieces are cut from a single thickness of fabric and others from a double thickness with one side of the pattern butting up to the fold: there are further levels of complexity when the fabric has a one-way pattern ..... And if the pattern is several sizes smaller or bigger than the person whose garment you are working on, you need to visualise the measurements which will help you to change the shape to suit them, which will not just be changing the main length and width.
Anyway, Rachel collected the clogs, which fitted perfectly, in the time between one train and the next, and she and Nico arrived at our gate by taxi at exactly the same time as we did on foot, coming back from picking up supplies from Tod (me) and leafletting (Mick). Fortunately I had done my job effectively, so the tacked-together dress fitted Rachel well and simply needed final adjustment on the hem.
One of my Christmas presents was the Lego 'Women of NASA' collection, which features Astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jamison, Astronomer Nancy Grace Roman who was largely responsible for planning the Hubble Space Telescope and Computer Scientist Margaret Hamilton who led the team that developed the on-board flight software for the Apollo Moon-landing programme. With Nico's enthusiastic assistance, these are now constructed and stand to one side of my Mac, so I see them whenever I am working on the computer. (a great bunch of women who also appreciated applied mathematics).
