Mathematics has the ability to describe things in many different ways. There are your simple examples and your complex examples. To make things more interesting, I can use a complex example. One complex example of using math to describe change would be the 2008 United States Presidential Elections between John McCain (representing the Republicans) and Barack Obama (representing the Democrats). This is a complex example.
To easily explain this example, one needs to know the core bases of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
The Republican Party’s main base would be conservative white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) while the Democratic Party’s main base would be comprised of African-Americans. The other voting blocks need to be treated as swing voters.
The issues important to the different voting blocks are best kept for another article or debate in the future.
There are other voting blocks that do play a role in the strength of both parties. How does mathematics apply to such change? There are many ways that it applies. One mainly needs to take a look at the electoral map. You have your red states, your blue states, and your purple states. Red states lean towards the right, blue states lean towards the left, while purple states swing either way. Red states are Republican territory while blue states are Democratic territory. The purple states are up for grabs.
Recently, red states are starting to turn blue. There is something that the Democratic presidential primary had brought into light: the power of the youth vote. So far, it was a time where many were voting for the first time. It is revealed that the younger voters tend to lean towards the left while the older voters tend to lean towards the right depending on what part of the United States they live in. When you factor in those voting blocks, there is a significant change. As a result, there is an ideological shift in those areas.
The younger block of voters tends to vote more liberally compared to the block of elderly voters.
When blocks of voters move to other parts of the country, it greatly affects the electoral map.
Depending on the ideology, a state could change from blue to red, red to blue, or one of the colors to purple.
Also, it shows that the voting blocks could shift to another political party.
This is a complex example on showing how math can be used to describe things. But, there are simpler examples of using mathematics to describe change. One example could be the fluctuation on the price of oil. As the price of oil per barrel goes up, the price of gasoline per gallon goes up with it. To notice how mathematics is used to describe that change, one simply needs to look at the price at the gas station. But, this is an interesting way to show that mathematics can be used to describe change.
It can also be used to describe change in the form of line graphs.
Pie-charts can also be used.
One example could be deciding on the budget and the amount of it. You have to think about how the money will be spent. You have to split the pie-chart into different sections on what the money will be spent for. The pie-chart can be shifted around to either add or cut funding to different aspects such as projects. If there is more money, there will be an increase in funding. If there is less money, there will be a decrease in funding.
Mathematics can be used to describe change in weight. If you lose weight, you decrease the number of pounds. If you gain weight, you increase the number of pounds. If you jog more, you increase the number of miles and/or minutes. If you jog less, you decrease the number of miles and/or minutes. For temperature, the number of degrees increases if it gets hotter and decreases if it gets cooler.
If you are planning to go one route that takes longer than another, you add on the number of miles you will have to travel. If you want to cook something and make it hotter, you increase the time in the microwave or the amount of heat on the stove. These are simple examples on how math is used to describe change. Whether you like mathematics or not it is used to describe many changes.
