February 2018 – Mathemafrica

A quick introduction to writing mathematics in WordPress using LaTeX

Here are a couple of very useful links about writing mathematics, for new authors of this blog:

LaTeX for wordpress
Equations in LaTeX in wordpress (and links in that same page, which are very useful).

I will update this as I find more useful material.

Generally I like to use the Visual Tab on the editor here rather than the Text Tab, unless there is some sort of strange formatting in which case I will go in and alter the Text.
I usually like to put formulas centrally justified on their own on a line with blank lines above and below.
Add Media to upload pictures or gifs and use the Fusion Shortcodes button (to the left of the yellow star in the blue box), to embed Youtube content.

Please let me know if, as an author, there is anything which is unclear about posting here and I will update accordingly.…

By Jonathan Shock| February 28th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

A Whimsical Introduction to Graph Theory (1)

Part 1 – What are Graphs?

Mathematics is full of fascinating ideas and concepts. These can, however, be very challenging to tackle and make sense of, especially when you are put under pressure to answer questions about them! In this post, and those to come, I hope to share some insight into these concepts without getting too formal. Where some definitions and more technical bits are introduced, they will be explained at end of the post: look out for the dagger $\dagger$ symbols!

To begin, let’s ask what we do in mathematics. The first step in any area of maths is almost always to abstract things. We take some concept we want to be able to work with and pull out the essential ideas. From a bunch of maps we may take out just destinations and the routes between them; from 3D objects we may only need to know what ways we can rotate them and still see the same thing; from a collection of algorithms we may only care about how long they take to run on a computer, and so on.…

By Brandon Du Preez| February 12th, 2018|Level: Simple|0 Comments

e-day – A mathematical holiday celebrated on February 7th

Today, February 7th, 2018, is called e-day because e is approximately 2.718, and this date is written 2/7/18 in some parts of the world.

e, also called Euler’s Number after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, is a very important constant that comes up in many different places in mathematics. The numer e was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while studying compound interest where $e$ arises as the limit of $(1 + 1/ n) n$ as $n$ approaches infinity. e can also be calculated by summing:

The constant e appears naturally on the exponential function, which models growth. Hence, the same way that the constant π appears in everything that is round, the number e appears in everything that grows: size of baby animals, leaves in trees, bacteria populations, spreading of diseases, spirals in flowers and snails, radiactive decay of elements, money invested in a bank, processing power of computers… Everything that grows the faster the bigger it is follows an exponential law, and contains the number e.

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By Andreas Daniel Matt| February 7th, 2018|Uncategorized|1 Comment