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Asked by liverum12 to Neil, Marcus, Kate, Claire, Alex on 16 Jun 2014.
Question: How does the principles of matmatics and science apply to your every day tasks
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Claire Brockett answered on 16 Jun 2014:
In my job, I’m working on better treatments for ankle injuries and degeneration. This means I need to know my anatomy pretty well. Our research group (http://www.imbe.leeds.ac.uk/) also develops tests that allow us to check new implants work before they’re used in patients (pre-clinical testing). To do this, we need to work out the loads and movements that would happen at the joints during daily activities, such as walking, climbing the stairs, getting out of bed, etc. This doesn’t use very complex maths, but arithmetic, vectors and calculation of forces come in handy almost every day. When we need to do very complex maths, we use computer models instead as they’re much quicker than us!
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Marcus Johns answered on 16 Jun 2014:
As with Claire, my research relies quite heavily on maths and other sciences.
I need to know about how the heart works, about how cells work, and how cells interact with each other and the extra cellular matrix – a structure that surrounds all the cells in your body. I haven’t actually done any biology since GCSE so I’ve had a lot to learn in the last year! I also need to know about chemistry in order to produce the solutions that I use to create the materials that I want to grow the cells on.
Maths is pretty much everywhere in my research. I’ve recently created a mathematical model to predict the solubility of cellulose in variations of the solutions that I’m using, which relies on polynomial functions. I also use statistics determine whether the materials I’m making are successful in comparison to other materials. -
Kate Niehaus answered on 16 Jun 2014:
I also use math and science a great deal. I am trying to predict and model different states of disease based on data that we can collect from patients. When I say “model,” what I mean is a mathematical representation of reality.
For instance, today I was working on a model that assumes that there are different types of patients who have a medical condition called inflammatory bowel disease. We have some information about each patient, but we don’t know which patients are in which groups. Using some pretty cool math, you can figure out how a set of data is best split into likely groups of similar types of patients. Math can be applied to solve all sorts of really interesting problems that I work on every day!
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Alex Lyness answered on 17 Jun 2014:
Hey liverum12,
Like it or loathe them as subjects, knowledge of science and mathematics and science underpins pretty much every decision an engineer must make in their day job. Engineers are very good at applying what scientists research and help find out.
Just yesterday I had to use it to work out which was the best value material to get some material to get a set of components 3D printed from. For this you have to take into account both the cost of the material per cm3 and also the performance of that material at different temperatures. That’s an easy example.
A more complex examples would be using mechanics which is important to an engineer, I’m currently trying to model and understand the way liquids flow down syringes and needles. As Kate mentions below, this is when its best to come up with a mathematical model, meaning that you can keep plugging values into a set of formulas that work things out for many different inputs. Lots of work goes in at the beginning to make a suitable mathematical model but it makes things easier in the long run. It can be both frustrating but very rewarding when you prove your model correct.
Finally, I often use statistics to help prove the ‘statistical significance’ of my results which means working out the probability that I am correct. It’s nice when this is above 99.95%!
That’s just three examples from a very busy day yesterday, I’m sure the guys can come up with many more.
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