WHY JUDE LAW CAN’T DO MATHS

It’s not often that we have British actor Jude Law ( above) explaining maths to us, but in the new Hollywood film CONTAGION

he demonstrates how quickly a deadly virus could spread … (1.17 point on trailer)

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Jude Law plays the colourful blogger Alan Krumwiede. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character dies and Matt Damon tries to save his daughter. (See pics)

   

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Krumwiede says ‘ On day one there were 2 people, then 4, then 16 … in three months it’s a billion. That’s where we’re heading.’ Is he right?

LETS CHECK IT OUT MATHSPIGS

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.Now this bug is highly contagious, but Krumweide’s estimates start high and end low. In the film he says the number of infected people will grow according to the series 2, 4, 16, 256 and then a number Mathspig,um, missed. (I was munching popcorn.)

This is wrong. According to this progression by Day 3 each person must go out an infect 16 other people. By Day 4 they must infect 256 people each. By Day 5 they must infect 65,536 people each. That is a BIG cough.

Then he claims that in 3 months or 90 days 1 billion people will be infected. That’s so sweet. If the Gweny bug was so highly  contagious the human race wouldn’t last that long. Oddly, however, this number has synergy with the TWILIGHT VAMPIRES.

Even if each germ-riddled person infected only 1 other healthy person each day, this is how long we would last:

You may need to use the WEB 2.0 calculator to solve this problem.

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Not everyone on earth would die, of course. As the numbers drop so do the infection rates. Meanwhile, some people in remote areas would not get infected and some people would have immunity and that’s when the plot gets hot, HOT, HOT!!

12 minute Maths Guru

Meet Salman Khan. He has put free maths on-line.

This article on Salman appeared in The Sunday Times, UK, 12 JUN 2011.

Salman, 28, started putting tutes online for his 12-year-old niece, Nadia, and things grew. So far the Kahn Academy’s claim to fame are:

* Over 2,400 videos including hundreds and hundreds of 12-minute maths tutes

* Over 63,000,000 lessons delivered.

* Bill Gates kids use the site.

* A staff of 1 with funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

* Tutes on Biology, Chemistry and Physics too.

You can look up the maths tutes by topic @ The Khan Academy.

Or search topics on Youtube eg. Introduction to Conics Khan

Why Does Mathspig like The Kahn Academy? Because it’s:

1. Free.

2. Quick

3. Clear

4. Low-key

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Salman gives digital chalk-and-talk tutes like a teacher. He hand draws the equations and graphs. He uses a calculator from time to time, but he tends not to use whizz bang spreadsheet graphs or perfectly presented textbook equations. It’s a bit wobbly and it’s all coming from Salman’s head.

And students like this approach. It makes maths look do-able.

Go, Salman.

Mathspig thinks you are just GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!

 Australia’s Year 7 – 12 Maths Curriculum is already on-line and free, funded by McDonald’s. See What are maths teachers for, sir?

The tutes on Maths Online are produced by Aussie Maths teachers and they are very good. Mathspig, of course, imagined the quadratic function tutes might look something like this:

Twilight Maths II: Will Vampires rule the world?

In Stephanie Meyer’s the Twilight series there are good Vampires and Bad Vampires. Edward Cullen and the other Vampires in the Cullen Covern are ethical Vampires. (See earlier post: Fang it to me! : Twilight Maths) The only eat animal blood. Edward falls in love with Bella a human. The baddie Vampires are James, Laurent (pictured) and Victoria.

Twilight Vampires, as with all vampires, can turn a human into a vampire by biting them. IN the Twilight mythology a vampire injects a venom into their victim and, depending on how much venom is injected the victim will turn into vampire in 3 – 5 days.

Vampires who drink human blood have red eyes. So freshly made vampires have bright red eyes due to the human blood already in their veins. Vampires who drink animal blood have yellow eyes.

How long would it take one Vampire, say James, to turn the whole population of the earth into vampires? We can work it out, mathspigs.

On the first night James goes out and bites a human. Now there are two vampires. Each night the vampires go out their numbers double.

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These calculations were updated for clarity on 21 OCT 2011 after I’d worked on my JUDE LAW CAN’T DO MATHS post. Now in the Twilight Series it takes 3 days for a  human to turn into a vampire. So we will assume that James and his rapidly growing covern go out every 3rd night to feast on human blood.

How many days will it take one bad Twilight vampire to take over the world (Population 6.8 Billion. See World Population Clock US Census Bureau ) ? You work it out. But here is a hint.

I suspect the Cullen Family are smart vampires because they only drink animal blood.
Unless, animals also turn into vampires and we are over run by vampire squirrels, vampire poodles, vampire canaries and more.