Math and the dreaded Ebola

As I was struggling with a topic to write today I thought of recent news in the United States.  What about Ebola and the exposure risk?  The fear that is put into us with mention of the possibility of the disease spread and that we all might end up exposed and sick if everything continues at this rate?  It’ll probably be like a plague, right?

If you ever get the chance to take Epidemiology, you will be fascinated by this topic.  There is so much to learn about disease - risk, exposure, spread.  So I will start with a basic epidemiologic term for this topic - R0.  

This values, R0 is representative of the rate of spread for a disease, based on exposure.  It’s the “reproductive rate” based on infectious time.. how many people will develop the disease?  So, for an example Measles is very infections - R0=18 for this disease which tells us it will spread very easily (without vaccination)!  On the contrary, Ebola has an R0 between 1.5 and 2.0...not as crazy as the news makes i t.

This is still an issue, because in general any R0 with a rate/value over 1 means this infection will keep spreading, rather than die down (R0<1),  The problem, in our society, is that no one understands how low that R0 is!  No one understands until they learn epidemiology :) 

 A few other sources to check out:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140916122936.htm

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/02/352983774/no-seriously-how-contagious-is-ebola

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/r0-ebola/

Interviewing!

I know we did a post last week promoting the site.  However we'd like to do a little more - we're very excited to announce the very first released INTERVIEW.  Our written interview is from a Math Intervention Teacher.  

We hope you're interested in purchasing and reading, for only $1.99. 

First Written Interview!

Please share your story with us as well!

http://www.notaprodigy.com/interviews---love-math.html



Hopefully we have many more to come!

A little bit of promotion

If you’ve followed www.notAprodigy.com, you may or may not have noticed that we’ve been doing a little bit of expansion over the past couple of months.  

We’re going to start releasing some of our favorite links as resources towards topics and their use in the real world.  If you have any great links please send them our way with a brief description of the topics and how the site has been useful to you or anyone you know!

In other terms, we have the following sub-topics and hope that you may find something interesting among our links.

• Share how you use math topics in your life/career.

We are collecting practical/hands-on use for the following 10 topics, spread out across Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus, Statistics, and miscellaneous math.

1) Quadratic equations

2) Linear inequalities

3) Shape volume

4) Trapezoids

5) Correlations/Causation

6) ANOVA

7) Derivatives

8) Integration

9) The number pi

10) Prime numbers

• Think you don't need that topic in the real world?

We are also trying to collect any suggestions for commonly misunderstood topics.  If you are a student have you encountered a topic you can’t imagine you’d ever need to know in real life?  If you are a teacher, are there topics your students consistently ask “why do I need this?”

We JUST started a new section linking some of the websites for these topics, starting with Algebra I.  If you have any suggestions for websites that connect these, or other topics, to the “real world” please send the along!

• Do you use and love math?

We’ve already collected a couple of great interviews.  Do you have a passion for your job and does your job/career involve using math or statistics in a regular OR creative way?  If you are interested in sharing what you do with others, we are looking to obtain interviews for our company.  Right now we are only interested in either written or in-person interviews.  We are looking for people who can offer something interesting in their responses to engage the reader/listener.

Humor in math&statistics

Part of what makes me (and many others) enjoy their career is taking part in the humor in and around the topics in our field.  I believe that having the ability to keep your work lighthearted in some ways makes it more of a community and makes your career choice more fun.  Lawyers have their lawyer jokes, doctors have their doctor jokes, and yes - mathematicians and statisticians have our (dorky) but silly jokes!

I’ve started making it a habit to post a joke daily (or so) on my instant messenger status (work communication tool).  Although most ignore it, a few like to try and guess the answer.  There’s a wide array of jokes to choose, ranging from pretty elementary (middle-schoolers would even enjoy) to those that wouldn’t make any sense unless you had studied pretty advanced math.  For the sake of trying to give a smile to other employees (non-Statisticians) I try to stick to the basic ones.

Here’s a few from the last couple of weeks.

• What did the acorn say when it grew up?
• Geometry (gee, i’m a tree!)
• What do you call an empty parrot cage?
• Polygon (Polly - gone)
• What do mathematicians have for dessert on Halloween?
• Pumpkin pi
• What did 0 say to 8?
• Nice belt!
• What has 8 eyes and 8 legs?
• 8 pirates!

Similarly I also enjoy some great comics so I’ll just share a few of my favorites!

I'm running out of good ones so please send some in to share with me :)

Links to more fun:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/babymantis/20-spectacularly-nerdy-math-jokes-1opu

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/jokes/topics/math.shtml

http://news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2013/10/09/the-10-best-maths-jokes-as-nominated-by-teachers-and-twitter.aspx