Interesting Applications of Mathematics

Fun Times / peddhapati / CC BY 2.0

I have enjoyed playing with mathematics since I was a young child. If you enjoy mathematics--or wonder why other folks do--you may enjoy reading about three of its interesting uses.

http://www.scrabble-assoc.com/info/history.html
Alfred Mosher Butts--with the help of James Brunot--invented Scrabble in 1948. Butts studied the letter frequency on the front page of The New York Times to decide what the letter distribution should be.

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/14/11/28/0338208/mathematicians-study-effects-of-gerrymandering-on-2012-election?
Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district boundaries to establish an advantage for a party in elections. Duke researchers are studying the discrepancies in vote counts based on how the redistricting is done.

http://scherlund.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-numbers-game-math-helps-to-predict_27.html?
Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute are using mathematical models to predict how our bodies' immune cells fight disease.

Word games, politics, biology... all are affected by mathematics.

Interesting reading!