Maths and Geography

Christina Sng for Maths@Singapore.

How can the two seemingly different subjects of mathematics and geography be related? But they are. Read on.

Mathematics studies numbers, quantities, and shapes while geography analyzes places and relationships between people and their surroundings. While they are different, there is a connection there.

Knowledge of mathematics is essential to understand many of the concepts in geography such as the dimension and magnitude of the Earth, the day-night cycle, the changing of seasons, solar and lunar eclipses, tides, currents, wind movements, rainfall, climate and weather, to name a few.

Math is required knowledge for drawing and understanding geographical maps as well as working out the coordinates of a location on the world map.

For surveying small areas in the field plane, euclidean geometry is used while spherical geometry and trigonometry are utilized to construct map projections.

Math helps students of geography calculate the thorny tangle of time differences between local, standard and international time and the time required to travel from one place on Earth to another.

Geography uses Math to calculate the distance of places, areas, hill gradients, and heights of places. Math helps geographers tabulate locations using degrees and with these calculations, layouts of areas can be predicted.

Geography and mathematics cannot be more intertwined.

For a deep dive on this intriguing topic, visit https://therealschool.in/blog/how-mathematics-used-geography-application-kids/amp/

Thanks to Samuel Ferrara @samferrara for making this photo available freely on Unsplash

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Author

Christina Sng is a three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author that finds peace in mathematics and the macabre. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Interstellar Flight Magazine, and The Washington Post. Aside from having over 20 years of experience in the field of writing, she also has an extensive background in UX design and IT. Her educational background combined with her interests and neverending curiosity about the world is the perfect recipe to have her tackle fascinating topics about math. She is able to approach the highly logical field of mathematics through an extremely creative lens that sheds new light and exposes new avenues on how it impacts our lives.