Spot the Frippet: an algebraic pattern.

 The world is held together by numbers.

Okay, that's not actually true. It's more that numbers are the best way we have of describing some of the ways that the world is stuck together.

Numbers may be useless for explaining why people are bad, or why they like bananas, or why birds suddenly appear every time you are near, etc, but they they're quite handy for explaining other stuff, like why your bread tends to fall butter-side down.

The most obvious feature of algebra is that it uses symbols, often letters, to take the place of any numbers it doesn't actually know yet. And when it's describing a pattern that's going to work for all numbers.

How can you spot algebra around the place? Not easily, but the patterns that algebra describes are everywhere. 

A=πr2

describes the way various bits of a circle are related to each other. The A in this case means area, r means distance from the middle of the circle to the outside, the little 2 means multiply that distance by itself, and the π sign means an infinitely long number beginning 3.14. These are all things you have to be told: you can't work them out for yourself.

Then there's the Fibonacci formula  Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2, where n > 1.

You'll see the pattern of that in the centre of a sunflower, or in the swirls of a pine cone.

(Sorry, images aren't loading on Blogger today.)

Anyway, today is a day for spotting patterns that can be described by algebra - and those that can't.

And thinking about the difference.

Spot the Frippet: an algebraic pattern. Those of us who hate maths will be pleased to know that the word algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr, which means the bone-setting.