The joy of equations

Part of my summer holiday was spent in trying to learn something about stuff outside the textbook areas of maths I’ve been looking at. They are fascinating, but because I’m still an arts and humanities girl at heart I needed something more romantic to lighten them up a bit.

My history teacher showed me some examples of how models can be used to try out ideas and see whether they fit what really happened in the past - for instance, I’ve played with a set of equations for the expansion of the Mongol empire mentioned in Sunstorm, and the spread of the Black Death in fourteenth century CE Europe. He also introduced me to sociology, where equations describe the behaviour of large numbers of people.Anyway, to get back to scientific computing, I find the way equations are written very beautiful but the way they go into a lot of software programs is ugly (especially spreadsheets). I often need to write them out myself before I can relate to them. Mr Grant lent me a computer with several programs which just write equations, the way you would by hand but typing them on screen. I’ve also been given a school copy of a free one (supplied by the government education ministry) to use on my own computer. I’ve had a lot of fun with these programs, and they have made the final connection between the excitement I feel about physics models and the “aesthetic me” that loves poetry and drama and painting.

The free program is Formulator Express, and is part of a set of programs given to teachers. I am very glad to have it for my own, but I hope to get my own copy of either MathType or Equations! (both of them have to be bought, but my uncle is talking about getting me one for my birthday). They are both very good, and do more than the free program, but I think different people would buy them. MathType appeals to the part of me which likes to write words, and Equations! pleases the bit of me that likes pictures - equations are both descriptions and pictures of something I can’t see with my eyes, only in my head.

All of these programs come down to picking and combining symbols, then letting the computer take care of drawing, spacing, arrangement and so on. The result is wonderfully sensual, with all the curves of a proper font setting off the beauty of the equation itself. They give you all sorts of ways to control and fine tune the way the equation looks, but won’t let you break the rules which control how an equation is supposed to look. They are magic. They have all the best bits of hand writing equations but let you adjust everything until it’s just right.

Equations! and Mathtype both help you to do a techie language called LaTex as well. I don’t think Formulator does, or if it does then I haven’t found it. I’m only just starting to figure this out, but it’s a way to describe equations. I’ve sort of got my head round the basic idea, but I don’t think I’d ever have the patience to get good at it - so it’s a good thing that these equation editors do a lot of it for you. For myself I found Equations! best for this part, it seemed more like the way I think, although MathType does whole pages of stuff at once.

I said before the summer that I had started painting equations. The equation editors have encouraged me to develop that work, and I have several sketchpads filled with arrangements of equations and graphs combined on the same page. (Apart from being beautiful, this is also useful. I tried to make sense of Einstein’s relativity stuff from a book, and got closest to understanding it through my montaged watercolour sketches.)

Now my English teacher (who started me on this stuff in the first place) and the art teacher have suggested that I work up some of my sketches into background scenery for a German play called Die Physiker, about Newton and Einstein. I am worried about this, as I don’t want to get known as a geek, but the idea does make me feel excited. I have done some experiments in the drama studio after school this term, putting Equations! equations and Autograph curves from the computer onto large sheets of calico to see how the forms and dynamics work together on a large scale.

[contributed by Lakshmi]

• Autograph and Equations! were supplied by Chartwell Yorke (who also stock MathType).
• Formulator (from Hermitech Laboratory in the Ukraine) is licensed for educational use as part of a standards pack from the UK Department for Education and Skills. The free version used by Lakshmi, Formulator Express, can be downloaded, or a full version purchased.
• MathType was supplied by Design Science.