History of Curves and Their Names

Here is some interesting history behind a few “good-looking” curves and how they got their names! Cissoid Equation: The Cissoid is named so because of its resemblance to the shape of a Cissus plant. The Cissoid is a curve, defined as the set of points P that is the same distance from a fixed point…

Puzzle: Do the Dance!

Step 1: Finding Nemo Can you find the function that is given in the graph below? Posted Earlier! Step 2: Drawing Pictures with Functions Functions are fun. Let’s take step 1 to a new level. Imagine the smiley face. Can we, rewrite it into a couple of equations? For example, was plotted with equations, given…

Being a Maths Evangelist

What better way to start the day? The first step to popularising maths is to defeat the fear that was instilled in you since early school days by parents, teachers, and friends. Given how my class with a mix of Life Science, Computer Science, and Arts majors students who used to tremble at the beginning,…

Storytelling to Introduce Applications of Laplace Transforms

“…and they couldn’t send the satellite up! Those big solar panels! Won’t fit in the rocket! If, in any way, they can pack it in the rocket – like we lazy souls pack our dresses when we go for a trip – and pull it out in the Outerspace and iron it back to the…

Analysis/Topology: Bounded and Totally Bounded Sets

Definitions Bounded set: Let <M,ρ> be a metric space. We say that the subset A of M is bounded if there exists a positive number L such that ρ(x,y)≤L  (x,y∈A) (Wikipedia) Diameter of a set: If A is bounded, we define diameter of A (denoted by diam A) as diam A=  ρ(x,y). If A is not…