Do you remember working through an advanced trigonometry problem in school and thinking that no one would ever use that math in the real world? If so, you might be surprised to learn that advanced mathematical models are widely used in modern technology in a variety of different ways. From helping to predict financial trends to optimizing healthcare delivery and much more, mathematical models are a crucial part of today’s technological landscape.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the ways that advanced math is shaping current society and future technology.
Analysing risk and market trends in finance
Also known as financial mathematics, mathematical models are used in finance to analyze risk and market trends. More specifically, they determine relationships between a wide variety of economic variables, including:
- Prices
- Volatility
- Interest rates
- Market movements
Using quantitative tools allows finance professionals to better understand current and future market trends, draw upon information from past trends, and determine if the risk involved in a purchase or other transaction is worth it. For many users, these calculations take place entirely in the background and are included in a program’s user interface. It is possible to benefit from the use of mathematical models without doing any of the actual calculations yourself.
Disease prediction
If there was ever a time in recent history when the importance of public health was widely understood, surely it is post-2020. Even now, the coronavirus is evolving and mutating. The good news is that today’s physicians and scientists, unlike those in the past, have access to advanced mathematical tools. These make analyzing a disease’s progress and treating it effectively more viable for patients around the country. Disease prediction, in particular, is incredibly useful for putting together treatment plans and, in some situations, estimating how much quality time patients have left.
Treatment optimization in healthcare
Healthcare is a busy field all over the world, and Canada is no exception. The need for effective treatment options implemented by qualified medical professionals is one of the strongest in the industry. Mathematics models can make providinghealthcare more effective and streamlined by analyzing service quality, utilization and productivity as demonstrated by a specific workforce. Care optimization is a great way to maximize the care that each patient receives without overloading nurses and other medical professionals.
Streamlining production processes
Producing material goods, regardless of the necessary resources, can be a tricky process to master. Spending too much on any one aspect of the process throws the others off and can result in missed timelines and poor quality control, while spending too little can result in many of the same problems. The goal is to find the ‘sweet spot’ of a particular design and the processes used to produce them; once you understand how materials and their strength, conductivity and stiffness, among others, impact manufacturing, you can optimize the amount of time, you must spend manipulating them into the goods in question.
Mathematical models are used in manufacturing and production to analyze how much material is needed, what kind of material is needed, and how each material must be designed and constructed to meet client goals.
Online gaming
Mathematical models are also used in gaming. This is true of most games, but perhaps especially so for online slots. Slot machines are driven by mathematics in a few different ways. It guides most of the user experience, in fact, with players seeking to land specific symbols on the reels, forms a combination of them on a specific payline, and understand a game’s volatility/RTP as they set their wager amount and start playing. More specifically, mathematics models determine how likely a specific symbol is to land, how often players will win as they play, how much they win, and even the way that the reels and paylines are designed.
On a broader level, mathematics modelling makes a prominent appearance in just about any kind of online game imaginable. From text-based adventures to dungeon crawlers and everything in between, mathematical models drive many games’ special features and base gameplay alike.
The bottom line
Are you interested in learning more about how mathematical models impact today’s world and technology? If so, use the topics above as starting points and dig into more detailed sources in the areas that interest you!
