Mathematics in the Modern World

ICMS

Mathematics in the Modern World

This project has involved the faculty and students. The aim has been to study important aspects of mathematics and their applications in fields connected with daily life, and to present them to a non-professional audience. We have exhibited this work at the annual meetings of the Indian Science Congress held at Calcutta (1995), Delhi (1996), Hyderabad (1998), Chennai (1999), at a science fair held in IIT (Delhi) in 2000 and at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in 2001.

The project has made extensive use of computers, especially in the form of interactive programs that allow the viewer the opportunity to work his own way through some of the arguments. It has made it possible for the lay person with a modest background in mathematics to understand and appreciate the role played by mathematics in our everyday lives and in disciplines such as Economics, Physics and Computer Science.

Subjects covered have included RSA and public key cryptosystems, error-correcting codes, image recognition, the Radon transform and its use in computer-aided tomography, the pricing of futures and options and the Black-Scholes theorem, differential equations and the acoustics of Indian drums and Horns, Fourier transforms and radio astronomy, applications of graph theory, the mathematics behind computer graphics, Knot Theory and DNA, theory of auctions, the transportation problem and so on.

An important aspect of this project has been the original research by students and faculty on some of the topics considered under this project.

Work is in progress on the preparation of a manuscript for publication of material developed for this project. Prof. K A. Ross, past President of the Math. Assoc. of America, is acting as consulting editor. We also hope to have interactive exhibits of these projects up soon.

We also hope to systematise and expand interaction with schools, colleges and universities. A beginning has been made by organising a workshop in Delhi for schoolteachers who had come from several parts of India.

To see some of these projects click here.