Word Finder - mathematical

definition

Of, or relating to mathematics

example

a mathematical problem

definition

Possible but highly improbable

example

The team has a mathematical chance of being promoted, but they need to win the next seven matches.

Space-time in simple terms is a mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum.

It has been stated that Napier's mathematical pursuits led him to dissipate his means.

The angle which the earth's axis makes with the plane in which the planet revolves round the sun determines the varying seasonal distribution of solar radiation over the surface and the mathematical zones of climate.

More detailed accounts are to be found in the various mathematical articles.

In England, Robert Recorde had indeed published his mathematical treatises, but they were of trifling importance and without influence on the history of science.

The fundamental geographical conceptions are mathematical, the relations of space and form.

So also any exhaustive survey of the temperature and salinity of the sea at a great number of points on and below the surface reveals a complexity of conditions that may defy mathematical analysis and could not easily be predicted.

He took a first class in the final mathematical school in 1854, and the following year was appointed mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, a post he continued to fill till 1881.

Dodgson periodically published mathematical works - An Elementary Treatise on Determinants (1867); Euclid, Book V., proved Algebraically (1874); Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879), the work on which his reputation as a mathematician largely rests; and Curiosa Mathematica (1888).

His mathematical bent, however, soon diverted him from legal studies, and the perusal of some of his earliest theorems enabled Descartes to predict his future greatness.

Placed at the university of Cracow in 1491, he devoted himself, during three years, to mathematical science under Albert Brudzewski (1445-1497), and incidentally acquired some skill in painting.

The determination of the solar parallax through the parallactic inequality of the moon's motion also involves two elements - one of observation, the other of purely mathematical theory.

Of these thirteen sections, the first contains a simple description of the more prominent phenomena, without mathematical symbols or numerical data.

The second includes definitions of technical terms in common use, together with so much of the elementary theory as is necessary for understanding the experimental work described in subsequent portions of the article; a number of formulae and results are given for purposes of reference, but the mathematical reasoning by which they are obtained is not generally detailed, authorities being cited whenever the demonstrations are not likely to be found in ordinary textbooks.

Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin) in 1847, as the result of a mathematical investigation undertaken to explain Faraday's experimental observations.

Regarding it as important that all reasoning with reference to magnetism should be conducted without any uncertain assumptions, he worked out a mathematical theory upon the sole foundation of a few wellknown facts and principles.

In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell published his classical Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, in which Faraday's ideas were translated into a mathematical form.

The director, Schmalfuss, encouraged him in his mathematical studies by lending him books (among them Leonhard Euler's works and Adrien Marie Legendre's Theory of Numbers), which Riemann read, mastered and returned within a few days.

It soon became evident that his mathematical studies, undertaken at first probably as a relaxation, were destined to be the chief business of his life.

This double cultivation of his scientific powers had the happiest effect on his subsequent work; for the greatest achievements of Riemann were effected by the application in pure mathematics generally of a method (theory of potential) which had up to this time been used solely in the solution of certain problems that arise in mathematical physics.

His mathematical enthusiasm was for the time completely quenched, and during two years the printed volume of his Mecanique, which he had seen only in manuscript, lay unopened beside him.

His mathematical discoveries were extended and over shadowed by his contemporaries.

Among the earlier publications of the academy were the Tudomdnytdr (Treasury of Sciences, 1834-1844), with its supplement Literatura; the KUlfoldi jdtPkszin (Foreign Theatres); the Magyar nyelv rendszere (System of the Hungarian language, 1846; 2nd ed., 1847); various dictionaries of scientific, mathematical, philosophical and legal terms; a Hungarian - German dictionary (1835-1838), and a Glossary of Provincialisms (1838).

His first distinctions are said to have been gained in theological controversy, but at an early age he became mathematical teacher in the military school of Beaumont, the classes of which he had attended as an extern.

Here, too, he died, attended by his physician, Dr Majendie, and his mathematical coadjutor, Alexis Bouvard., on the 5th of March 1827.

By his discovery that the attracting force in any direction of a mass upon a particle could be obtained by the direct process of differentiating a single function, Laplace laid the foundations of the mathematical sciences of heat, electricity and magnetism.

The theory of probabilities, which Laplace described as common sense expressed in mathematical language, engaged his attention from its importance in physics and astronomy; and he applied his theory, not only to the ordinary problems of chances, but also to the inquiry into the causes of phenomena, vital statistics and future events.

For the history of the subject see A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability, by Isaac Todhunter (1865).

The extension of the range of subjects to which mathematical methods can be applied, accompanied as it is by an extension of the range of study which is useful to the ordinary worker, has led in the latter part of the 19th century to an important reaction against the specialization mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

On the other land, the lateness of occurrence of any particular mathematical idea is usually closely correlated with its intrinsic difficulty.

We then obtain a set of equations, and by means of these equations we establish the required result by a process known as mathematical induction.

The following are some further examples of mathematical induction.

A period of mathematical stagnation then appears to have possessed the Indian mind for an interval of several centuries, for the works of the next author of any moment stand but little in advance of Brahmagupta.

Although Pell had nothing to do with the solution, posterity has termed the equation Pell's Equation, or Problem, when more rightly it should be the Hindu Problem, in recognition of the mathematical attainments of the Brahmans.

About the beginning of the 17th century various mathematical works by Franciscus Vieta were published, which were afterwards collected by Franz van Schooten and republished in 1646 at Leiden.

In the application to sound, where we know what we are dealing with, the matter is simple enough in principle, although mathematical difficulties would often stand in the way of the calculations we might wish to make.

We readily find (with substitution for k of 27r/X) a2b S n J s in fl „2a2E2 „2b2n2 f2X2 f2X2 as representing the distribution of light in the image of a mathematical point when the aperture is rectangular, as is often the case in spectroscopes.

The efficiency of a telescope is of course intimately connected with the size of the disk by which it represents a mathematical point.

Apart from the ruling, we know that the image of a mathematical line will be a series of narrow bands, of which the central one is by far the brightest.

The position of the middle of the bright band representative of a mathematical line can be fixed with a spider-line micrometer within a small fraction of the width of the band, just as the accuracy of astronomical observations far transcends the separating power of the instrument.

It appears indeed that the purely mathematical question has no definite answer.

The method of resolution just described is the simplest, but it is only one of an indefinite number that might be proposed, and which are all equally legitimate, so long as the question is regarded as a merely mathematical one, without reference to the physical properties of actual screens.

The point at issue was, that neither in the polyphonic school, in which Zarlino was educated, nor in the later monodic school, of which his recalcitrant pupil, Vincenzo Galilei, was the most redoubtable champion, could those proportions be tolerated in practice, however attractive they might be to the theorist in their mathematical aspect.

Didymus, writing in the year 60, made the first step towards establishing this pleasant-sounding scale upon a mathematical basis, by the discovery of the lesser tone; but unhappily he placed it in a false position below the greater tone.

The mathematical discussion of Airy showed that the primary rainbow is not situated directly on the line of minimum deviation, but at a slightly greater value; this means that the true angular radius of the bow is a little less than that derived from the geometrical theory.

His mathematical researches were also concerned with the theory of equations, but the question as to his priority on several points has been keenly discussed.

But the development of mathematical and physical science soon introduced a fundamental change in the habits of thought with respect to medical doctrine.

The medicine of the i 8th century is notable, like that of the latter part of the 17th, for the striving after complete theoretical systems. The influence of the iatro-physical school was by no means exhausted; and in England, especially through the indirect influence of Sir Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) great astronomical generalizations, it took on a mathematical aspect, and is sometimes known as iatro-mathematical.

Mead, a man of great learning and intellectual activity, was an ardent advocate of the mathematical doctrines.

Before he was sixteen he attended lectures at Owens College, and at eighteen he gained a mathematical scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1871 as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, having previously taken the degree of D.Sc. at London University and won a Whitworth scholarship. Although elected a fellow and tutor of his college, he stayed up at Cambridge only for a very short time, preferring to learn practical engineering as a pupil in the works in which his father was a partner.