BEDA #8: Question Tuesday!

Best and worst thing about being a ginger?
The worst thing is definitely the sun burns! I spend 15 minutes in the sun and I turn the color of a tomato, and I'm only slightly exaggerating!
The best thing is probably all of the people telling my how much they love the color of my gorgeous auburn puff. It happens at least a couple of times a week and it's usually little old ladies.
Funny story: when I was very young, 3-5 years old I think, my mom took me tot he grocery store and a couple of nuns came up to me to tell me that they loved my hair, and in response I did an impression of a T-Rex, my favorite dinosaur, by rawring at them like a T-Rex and putting up my fingers like claws and that freaked them out. (This also relates to what job I wanted when I was a kid, which I'll come back to in a sec.)

How is your Nanowrimo story going?
Not as well as I'd like. I have only 2100 words right now... Encouragement? :)

What are your hobbies?
I like writing, obviously otherwise I'd be even more crazy to subject myself to Nanowrimo, but I also really like to watch the show Arrow. It's really good.

Pie or Cake?
Cake! Though it's got to be dairy free.


What was your least favorite subject in high school?
My least favorite subject in high school was math, but specifically Algebra 2/Trig. I had a horrible teacher who thought I was insubordinate and who refused to give me any help when I was floundering in her class because I was "passive-aggressive." I had a 504 which was a documented physical disability, which allowed me to get extra time on tests and she refused to let me get extra time, so I was failing her tests because I wasn't finishing them, until I got retested to make sure I actually needed it (Spoiler alert: after several multi-hour tests on weekends, we figured out that my fine motor skill issues didn't fix themselves). Then after that she treated me like I was a toddler who couldn't understand English. It was humiliating, so yeah. I hated that class and I didn't particularly enjoy math to begin with.

Weirdly, I didn't enjoy English classes very much until my senior year of high school and college. Just goes to show you that things change!


What was the first thing you remember ever wanting to be when you grew up?
I desperately wanted to become a paleontologist when I was five. I knew everything there was to know about dinosaurs and I had watched all the documentaries ever made on dinosaurs. Jurassic Park then scared the crap out of me in the first thirty seconds. I still wanted to be a paleontologist for a while, but I eventually lost almost all of my knowledge about dinosaurs sadly.

Super hero or Super villain?

THOR! ... ahem. Superhero. :)

BEDA 7: OMG Bacon is going to kill us!!!! (or is it?)

So I asked for topic suggestions for what I could write about, and I decided to combine two of them. My favourite American stereotype - which happens to be all Americans are fat (in particular going into their over-consumption of bacon), and also to teach everyone something maths related. Also, I just thought I'd let you know that I've done research for this post (get me). So let it begin.

British 'newspapers' are particularly notorious for decreeing pretty much every food source is putting you at risk of death. In particular many of you I'm sure will have heard the Daily Mail cancer song, and if not here it is:

This is the article, which I'll be taking about, it's probably worth reading, but if you don't fancy taking the time to do so, I can summarize into two bullet points:

• Bacon increases your chances of getting cancer by over 20%
• Eat bacon, and you will die.

WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO EAT BACON?!

When you read the article through you panic. It's based on a study by The World Cancer Research Fund - that sounds like a credible source doesn't it?

After you've finished hyperventilating over the fact that this God given food source may result in death, and after you've contemplating whether a life without bacon, is a life worth living, the analytical and sceptical part of your mind might kick in. You've been eating bacon all your life, and so do most of the other people you know too. Most of them wont have got cancer - something fishy is going on here.

Now newspapers never outright lie about something. However they do very often misinterpret data. This right here is a massive case of misinterpretation. The article is correct in the sense, that yes, eating processed meats does increase your risk of getting cancer by 21%. But, here comes the important part - we need to find out what the initial risk of getting cancer is in the first place. A little bit of research, will lead you to find the initial risk of getting colorectal cancer (the one the study is based around) is 5 out of 100. A 21% increase gives us 6 out of 100 people. Or put another way, if 100 people eat bacon every day, 1 more will develop this form of cancer, so it makes absolutely no difference to 99 out of 100 people. It doesn't seem quite so scary now does it?

It's okay though, you'll probably think most people know not to take newspapers too seriously. The problem is, many people in fact do. I'm not sure how many of you will have heard about the MMR problems we had and our currently have in the UK, but I'll quickly explain. In 1998, a very poorly conducted study linking autism to the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination, was reported in the press. It caused unprecedented widespread panic, and so many children weren't given this incredibly important jab. Now I wont go into too much detail about how vaccinations work, but there is a critical percentage of the population which needs to be vaccinated in order to prevent an outbreak. This percentage wasn't met, and as a result, many children have, and will still in the future feel the effects of this life changing illness, or die needlessly.

So who is to blame? Well, the study was a load of rubbish to begin with, so obviously they are partially responsible.  However the media, did not check the credibility of the information, and this was what resulted in the panic. So the media is just as dangerous as the threats which they publish.

The moral of this story - don't believe what you read in the newspapers, and get someone who knows what they're talking about to check things out.

This post is a little heavy going, so feel free to ask me any questions if there's anything you don't understand, or want to know more about.

To lighten the mood, here's a picture of my honorary niece (boyfriend's sister's daughter), at only a few hours old:

Needless to say, I'm going to be a doting Auntie!

DFTBA x

The Resident Mathematician answers all!

Lots of questions! I feel popular :P
So lets get to it!

In keeping with the misconceptions trend on youtube at the moment: As a professional mathketeer (that’s the term, right?) what common math misconception (right?) annoys you the most (math?)?

There are far too many to choose from, so I'm going to pick my top 3 misconception:

1. Math.  I'm sorry but I may be about to go terribly British on you, but math annoys me. The word you are looking for is maths. Maths (the shortened version of mathematics) is a broad name for a group of subjects, hence the s. You cover a very wide range of subjects, from algebra, to calculus, operational research to statistics ( my personal favourite). So are we clear mathS.
2. Dividing by zero.
   This is not okay. Not by any measure. Just to clear this up once and for all, dividing by zero does not give you 1, the original number, zero, or infinity (usually). It is just wrong. It makes my skin crawl. My moto is, every time you divide by zero, God kills a kitten. Do you want that on your conscience? No, I thought not.
3. Every infinity is the same. To anybody who "thinks maths", this will seem obviously wrong. There are many different types of infinity. The infinite counting numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6....), infinite rational numbers (1, 1/2, 1/3, ... 2, 2 1/2...) the infinite irrational numbers ( such as Pi and square root 2) to name but a few.

What are the differences between math in school and math in university? What did you learn in university, that you didn't already cover in school?

I'm going to have to give you the British version of this, as I'm certain school maths varies from country to country. Okay so the major difference of school maths and University maths is that it becomes more abstract and also more applied at the same time. We have several modules at Uni that are entirely abstract, in the sense that you can't apply them to every day life. I struggle with these as I don't like being able to use them practically, but at the same time, they provide the foundation of everything we need to get anywhere. For the applied things, we have several things that are similar to physics, and also we cover statistics and operational research, the latter being very interesting. Do you ever wonder how sat-navs know the shortest route? It's all down to operational research.

What do you think of Vi Hart?

Good question. I've only recently started following her on youtube, so I don't really feel qualified to say much, but I'll give it my best shot. As someone who wants to go on to teach mathematics, I think it's really great that she gets people that aren't normally passionate about maths interested and thinking about the subject. That being said, as someone who works with and reads about maths daily, I have yet to find something she explains that I've not heard yet. So she's good, but I'm looking forward to the day when she explains something I've not yet come across.

I love you Ali <3 xxxxxxxxxxxxx (+1)

Just to clear this up for everybody, this isn't a secret love confession by a stranger. Or a question about maths. My boyfriend James follows the blog and decided to contribute. Thank you James, I love you too.

However, the (+1) has confused me slightly. This was added on afterwards. So the question is, is this meant to mean that it was my "+1" who wrote this, or has someone else confessed their love for me too?

Are you a mathmagician? You study maths and you're british.... DON'T LIE TO US!!

Yes. Yes I am. I don't have a cape of a magic wand, but I do have a bad sense of fashion and a scientific calculator, and I'M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT!!!

On another note, whoever asked this, I love you forever!

So that's the end of this very long list of questions. I hope I have answered them satisfactorily :) Feel free to ask me more questions in the comments if you so wish.

Peace out