Maths for Dummies
Did you ever find Maths hard? Tricky? Deceptively difficult? Did your teacher fail to inspire? Was the concept of new maths just too much? Or were you a genius of numbers?
Well try this:
1200-year-old problem 'easy' | ||||
| Dr James Anderson, from the University of Reading's computer science department, says his new theorem solves an extremely important problem - the problem of nothing. "Imagine you're landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot's working," he suggests. "If it divides by zero and the computer stops working - you're in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you're dead." But Dr Anderson has come up with a theory that proposes a new number - 'nullity' - which sits outside the conventional number line (stretching from negative infinity, through zero, to positive infinity). 'Quite cool'The theory of nullity is set to make all kinds of sums possible that, previously, scientists and computers couldn't work around."We've just solved a problem that hasn't been solved for twelve hundred years - and it's that easy," proclaims Dr Anderson having demonstrated his solution on a whiteboard at Highdown School, in Emmer Green. "We're the first schoolkids to be able to do it - that's quite cool," added another. Despite being a problem tackled by the famous mathematicians Newton and Pythagoras without success, it seems the Year 10 children at Highdown now know their nullity. Well I struggled and am still struggling... SM --------------------------------------------------------- |
