CHAPTER I

Lesson 1: PATTERNS AND NUMBERS IN NATURE AND THE WORLD

Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the chapter the students are expected to:

 Express appreciation for mathematics as human endeavor.

Humans developed a system for recognizing thoughts, classifying and organizing patterns
which are vital clues to the rules governing natural processes. It is called mathematics.

Early Greek Philosophers studied different patterns in attempt to explain the order of nature. The
humanity became explicitly aware of the two types of patterns known as fractals and chaos.
Fractals are geometric shape that repeats their structure on an even finer scale, while chaos
shows apparent randomness whose origins are entirely deterministic. Pythagoras explained the
harmonies in music as arising from a number. Plato considered that there is a universal pattern or
ideal forms to which objects in nature are imperfect copies. For example, a flower can be circular
but not a mathematical circle.

World, by nature, is a combination of patterns and they can be seen by careful

observations in spite of regularities and irregularities. Any form of these observations can be
modeled mathematically. These natural patterns include symmetry, spirals, tessellation, stripes,
and so on

Waves and dunes are clues to the flow of water, sand and air. Regular nightly motion of
stars also confirms that the earth rotates, and that rotation was used by ancients to predict time.
Rainbows tell us the scattering of lights, indirectly confirming the rain drops are spheres. The
tiger’s stripes and the hyena’s spots attest to mathematical regularities in biological growth and
form.

Animals have mirror symmetry, so do leaves and some flowers. Echinoderms like
starfish, sea urchins and sea lilies have five-fold symmetry. Snowflakes have six-fold symmetry,
and a water splash approximates a radial symmetry.

Considering numbers as simplest mathematical objects, a year is roughly three hundred

sixty-five days, people have two legs, cats have four while spiders have eight. Have you gone for
a trip such as mountain climbing and notice the world around you? The different in leaves, in
hues of the sky, the transformations and movement of clouds, how high a rabbit can jump nor
how fast the turtle run? Have you ever wondered how much water one must take? Are you
watching your weight and your calorie intake? Or how much time you allot in preparing things
for such a trip? Have you not wondered how most vendors do not make mistake in giving your
change after buying even without calculator? Consciously, all of these activities engage some
form of mathematics.

Mathematics aside from being related to numbers, is also considering symbols, notations,
operation and function thus providing new questions to think about. Pythagoreans obsession with
number was not baseless. Too many “coincidences”, too many connection between number by
number, number and shape, number and music-led them to re-examine the accepted world view
to there day. Numbers, as originally conceived, were the pragmatic progeny of accounting and
commerce; but slowly, as they “grew”, were seen by the Pythagoreans(and others) as having a
meaning that stretched far beyond the mere representation of ‘quantities’ and the collections of
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material objects that had spawned theirs introduction. The Pythagorean vision marked a
fundamental turning point in the attitude not only to numbers, but indeed to nature itself.

Nature has its laws. Natural laws are not like laws in our society. Societal laws concerns
human actions and are determined by fundamental force in the nature. These arise from careful
application of systematic studies of the natural world through experimentation and observation
called as scientific. This method provides scientist a rigorous framework too objectively study
the natural world. Natural laws can be verified through experiments conducted by independent
observers. The law can be simple statement in worlds, as well as a mathematical equation.
Examples of these natural laws are (1) laws of Planetary Motion by Johannes Kepler, (2) Law of
Universal Exapansion by Edwin Hubble, (3) Laws of Motion and Universal Gravitation by Sir
Isaac Newton, (4) Fluid Mechanics by Sir George Stokes, and even the Theory of Relativity of
Albert Einstein would not have gone farther without mathematics.

Many breakthroughs in the field of science and engineering are already evident.
Theoretical investigations for treatment procedures by modeling and simulation of biological
processes were made possible through creative employment of mathematics. Improvements in
Information and Communication Technology also contributed to the fast pacing on human
endeavours in terms of communications, commerse and lifestyles. However, though “millenials”
are hesitant in considering courses that involve mathematics, they use gadgets and other
technologies appealing to their senses.

One can never deny the fact that mathematics is everywhere not only because it can be
seen in nature but also because of its practical applications in our daily lives.

FIBONACCI SEQUENCE.

Fibonacci sequence, named after Leonardo Pisano or Leonardo of Pisa, is a series of

numbers where a number is found by adding the two number before it. Starting with 0 and 1, The
succession goes on, 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 and so on

As a trivia, Fibonacci is a shortened word for the Latin term “filiusbonacci” which means
“son of Bonnacio”. His father’s name was Guglielmo Bonnacio was a wealty Italian merchants,
representing the Republic of Pisa trading in Bugia, Algeria in North Africa. Fibonacci was
extensive traveler around Mediterranean and met numerous merchants. He studied different
numeral systems and methods, including the Hindu-arabic numeral system which he learned
from North Africa and eventually making it as popular to Europe though his Liber Abaci (Book
of Calculation). Today, the system is the most common repsentations of numbers.

The original problem Fibinacci investigated was about how fast rabbits can breed in ideal
circumstances. Beginning with a newborn male and female rabbit,we will assume the following
conditions:

a.Rabbits reach sexual maturity after one mouth.

b.The gestation period for a rabbit is one mouth
c.Female rabbit always gives birth to one male and one female rabbit every mouth.
d.Rabbits do not die.

Considering the conditions given, the newborn pair of rabbit are not yet at sexual
maturity after one mouth, therefore, they can’t mate. At two mouths, they have mated but not yet
given birth resulting to having the same number of pairs. At the fourth mouth, the original pair

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gives birth again, the second pair mates but not gives birth, resulting to three pairs in all.
Continuing this process, this scenario answered Fibonacci’s question as to how many pair of
rabbits could be born in a year.

FIBONACCI IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

The Fibonacci numbers also occur as the sums of “shallow” diagonals in pascal’s
Triangle. Fibonacci numbers is also a complete sequence where every positive integer can be
written as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, where one number is used once at the most. In computer
science, a search technique was developed for searching a sorted array with aid from the
sequence.

FIBONACCI AND SEVERAL BIOLOGICAL SETTINGS

Fibonacci sequence can be found in other places in nature like branching in trees,
arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an
uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone. Also on many plants, the number of petals is
a Fibonacci number. Many plants including buttercups have 5 petals; lilies and iris have 3 petals;
some delphiniums have 8; corn marigolds have 13 petals; some asters have 21 whereas daisies
can be found with 34,55 or even 89 petals.

The Fibonacci numbers are also well represented on honeybees. Honeybee lives in a
colony called hive and they have an unusual family tree. In a colony, there is one special female
called queen. There are male bees who does not work and are produced by the queen’s
unfertilized eggs called drones. They only have a mother but no father. There are also other
female bees who are called worker but they do not produce eggs. Female bees are produce where
the queen mated with a male bee so they have two parents. They usually end up being fed with a
substance called royal jelly which makes them grow into queens ready to go off when the bees
are ready to swarm and leave their home in search for a new place to build their hive. If yo take
any bee hive follow the pattern, it would look like:

Number of Parents Grand Great Grand Gt – Gt Gt – Gt – Gt

Parents Grand Parents Grand Parents
Male Bees 1 2 3 5 8
Female Bees 2 3 5 8 13

Since a drone has only one parent(only a mother and no father), it also has an interesting
genealogical tress. Generation 1 has 1 member( the male). One generation back there is also 1
member( the mother). Two generations back there are 2 members (the mother and father of the
mother). The number of numbers in each generation follow the Fibonacci sequence.

FIBONACCI RECTANGLES

Start with two small squares of size 1 next to each other, draw on top both of these a
square of size (1 + 1) = 2. Touching both a unit square and the latest square of side 2, having
sides 3 units long; and then another touching both the 2-square and the 3-square (which has
sides of 5 units). Adding squares whose side is as long as the sum of the latest two square’s sides
produces a new rectangular image that fallows Fibonacci sequence. This set of rectangles whose
sides are two successive Fibonacci numbers; we will call the Fibonacci Rectangles.

In each square of Fibonacci Rectangles, a spiral can be drawn by putting together the
quarters of a circle in each square. The spiral is not a true mathematics spiral (since it is made up

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of fragments which are parts of circles and does not go on getting smaller and smaller) but is a
good approximation to a kind of spiral that does appear often in nature. Such spirals are seen in
the shape of shells of snail and sea shells and in the arrangement of seeds on flowering plants
too. The distance of the line from the center of the spiral increase by a factor of the golden
number in each square. So points on the spiral are 1.618 times as far from the center after a
quarter-turn, that is, equivalent to 6.854 times further out than when curve last crossed the same
radial line.

FIBONACCI SEQUENCE AND THE GOLDEN RATIO

Two consecutive Fibonacci numbers approaches Golden Ration. It is easier to see what is
happening if we plot the ratios on a graph where Fib(i) can be any Fibonacci number and Fib( i -
1) is any number preceding it:

The golden ratio often represented by a Greek letter phi with a value of 1.618034 is also
called the golden section or the golden mean or divine Proportion. The proportion is also
said to be aesthetically pleasing due to which several artists and architects, including Salvador
Dali and Le Corbusier, have proportioned their work close to the golden ratio. The Fibonacci
sequence and the golden ration are intimately interconnected.

Reference

 Nocon, R.& Nocon, E., -Essential Mathematics for the Modern World
 Aufman, R. (2018 ) Mathematics in the Modern World, Rex Book Store, Inc.,
 Dalisay, Clarenz, LPT., et al. (2018) Mathematic in the Modern World, OUR LADY OF
FATIMA UNIVERSITY

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General Education INSTRUCTOR
 Exercise: Nature of Mathematics

Name: ____________________________________________________

Course and Year: ___________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________________

I. Complete the K – W – L chart below

WHAT I KNOW WHAT I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT I LEARNED

2. What new ideas about Mathematics did you learn?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
1. What is it about mathematics that might have changed your thoughts about it?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

2. What is most useful about Mathematics for Humankind?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

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 3. Where, in your field, can you use Mathematics?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

4. Who is Fibonacci and what did he do?

___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________

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1st Semester, S.Y. 2020-2021 Prepared by: SHELA M. RAMOS
General Education INSTRUCTOR
 Chapter 2

MATHEMATICAL LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLS

Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the chapter the students are expected to:

 Discuss the language, symbols and conventions of mathematics;

 Explain the nature of Mathematics as a Language;
 Perform operation on Mathematics expressions completely;

Lesson 1: LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

Language is a fundamental tool that bridge the gap among people from varying origins
and cultures without prejudice to their background and upbringing. It can be communicated in
either spoken or written manner as long as words are arranged in a structured and systematic
way.

As a general concept, “language” may refer to the ability to learn and used systems and
complex communications or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems.

Considering the Mandarin Language, a different sets of characters are available for the
sum, moon, stars, house, chair, table, tress, plants, flower and relationships like father, mother,
brother, sister. These unfamiliar characters may make learning mandarin more difficult that the
greek language. Even the Greek letters are different from the English alphabet. Mathematics is
also a language. It has its own symbol system, the same way as English or Greek languages have
their own alphabet.

For example, try solving the given problem:

Ana est deux fois plus agee que son frère et la somme de leurs ages est de 36 ans. Quel age ont-
ils?

Since the language used may seem unfamiliar to you, understanding the entire problem
creates another problem: failure to understand what the given is all about. To understand the
ideas or concepts of Mathematics and figure out clearly the logic behind problems is one of the
many reasons why we need to know the language of mathematics. The language itself is precise,
it can make very fine distinction among a set of symbols. It is concise because it can briefly
express long sentence. It is also powerful because of the relative ease it gives upon expressing
comprlex thoughts.

Mathematics is a symbols language. Some of the symbols you may encounter as you read
this book are the following:

The subsets of the real world can be described using this mathematics language symbols
above. Problems in Physics, like the free-felling bodies, speed and acceleration, quantities like
the chemical content of vegetables, the use of mathematical modeling in biological disease
modeling and the formula employed in the social science can all be expresses using
mathematical sentences. Even abstract structure can also be described by mathematics. Examples
of such are abstract algebra, linear algebra, topology, real analysis and complex analysis, all of
which have no known physical counterparts.

MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD

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General Education INSTRUCTOR
 Mathematics, therefore, is the language of the sciences, business, economics, music,
architecture, the arts, and even politics. There is an intimate connection between the language of
mathematics and the English language. The brain hemisphere responsible for controlling
language is also the same hemisphere responsible for the tasks involving mathematics. This part
of the brain is the left brain hemisphere that coordinate logical or analytical thinking while the
right brain hemisphere is responsible for creative thinking.

ENGLISH LANGAUGEA VS MATHEMATICS LANGUAGE

ENGLISH MATHEMATICS
SYMBOLS English Aphabet and English Alphabet, Numeral,
punctuation Greek letters, grouping
Symbols, Special Symbols
Name Noun Expression
Complete thought Sentence Sentence
Action Verbs Operation and other
action(e.g. simplify,
rationalize)
What is In a sentence Verbs Equality, inequality,
membership in a set
Attribute of a sentence Fact or Fiction True or false
Synonyms Different words but the same The same object but different
meaning names
The tables below show the similarities or comparison of English language and mathematics

Sets

A SET is a collection of numbers, peoples, letters of the alphabet, any other sets and
other distinct objects. They are conventionally represented by capital letters. These objects are
called elements. Sets can be described or specified either by using a description or by listing each
member of the set. That is,

A is the set of the first four positive integers

A = { 1,2,3,4 }

Note that in listing, the order of the elements is irrelevant and in case that the set has many
elements, the listing can be abbreavited.

B is the set of the first thousand positive integers

B = { 1,2,3 , … ,1000 }

Considering the given sets A and set B, every member of set A is also a member of set
B, therefore, it can also be stated as “ A is a subset of B” or “ A is contained in B”. the realtion
between sets A and B is established by ⊆ is called inclusion or containment.

If, however, there is another number of sets available and they are all contained in B, set
B will be considered as Universal Set.

Also, a set with no element is called null set.

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Elementary Logic

Logic allows us to determine the validity of argument in and out of mathematics.

Proposition is a declarative statements that may expresses an idea which can be true or
false but not both. They can be expressed by the symbols P, Q, R or p, q r.

Types of propositions

1. Simple means single idea statement

2. Compounds convey two or more ideas

Example:

Each of the following statement is a proposition, some are true and some false. Can you tell
are true and which are false? If it is false, state why.

a. 9 is a prime number
b. 5+3=8
c. X2 + Y2 ≥ 0
d. 10 ¿−3
Answer
a. False, Prime number have no other factors than 1 and itself
b. True
c. True
d. False, A negative number is always less than a positive number

Logical Connectives

Statement Connective Symbolic Type of statements

Not P Not ∼p Negative
P and Q And P∧Q Conjunction
P or Q Or P∨Q Disjunction
If P, then Q If …. Then P→Q Conditional
P if and only if q If and only if P ↔Q Bi - conditional

Quantifier

1. Universal Quantifier “for all” or “for every”, denoted by ∀

2. Existential Quantifier “there exists” denoted by ∃

Converse, Inverse and Contrapositive of a Conditional

The Converse of p → q is q → q

The Inverse of p → q is ∼ p → ∼ q

The Contrapositive of p → q is ∼ q → ∼ p

Example of logic

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General Education INSTRUCTOR
 A. Write the following in symbolic form using P, Q, R statement and the syml
→ , ,↔ , ∧, ∨ where
P : The sun is shining
Q: it is raining
R: the ground is wet

1. If it is raining then the sun is not shining.

Answer: Q → P

2. It is raining and the ground is wet.

Answer: Q ∧ R
3. The ground is wet if and only if it is raining and the sun is shining.
Answer: Q ↔ (Q ∨ P)
B. Write the statement using ∀∧∃ as needed.
1. Everyone in the room is a registered students
2. Not all men are mortal.
Answer:
1. ∀ Person x in the room, x is registered nurse.
2. ∃ men x such that x is immortal.

Reference

 Nocon, R.& Nocon, E., -Essential Mathematics for the Modern World
 Aufman, R. (2018 ) Mathematics in the Modern World, Rex Book Store, Inc.,
 Dalisay, Clarenz, LPT., et al. (2018) Mathematic in the Modern World, OUR LADY OF
FATIMA UNIVERSITY

MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD

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General Education INSTRUCTOR
 Exercise: Mathematics Language and Symbols

Name: ____________________________________________________

Course and Year: ___________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________________

Convert the following into mathematical expression/equation

a. A number less than 10 _________________

b. Double the number and subtract it from 10 _________________

c. 5 is less than twice the number _________________

d. Trice the number and add by 6 is 9 __________________

e. A number is divided by 5 __________________

f. 20 less than a number is added to 10 _________________

g. 10 is added to a number and divide it by 5 _________________

h. The product of a number and twice a number is subtracted from 10 _________________

i. The product of two consecutive number is 110 _________________

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1st Semester, S.Y. 2020-2021 Prepared by: SHELA M. RAMOS
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