Courtney Smith and Breanna Floyd
Math 101- Project
Chockla
March 2, 2015
How is Mathematics used in Your Everyday Field of Study?
Our group decided to research DNA profiler, Professor Alec Jeffery’s, as well as, learn about the importance of fractals in everyday math. Professor Alec Jeffery’s started on his road to success by attending Merton College, Oxford and eventually became a geneticist. After receiving his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, he soon became one of the first people, to discover split genes. After this discovery, he accepted a job in the department of genetics at the University of Leicester. We chose to study Alec Jeffery’s life because of his advances in the forensic anthropology work field and his overall experience with DNA.
Jefferys’ development of DNA amplification opened up new approaches to forensic testing and redefined DNA profiling as a whole. A huge part of Jefferys’ success has been involved with DNA fingerprinting. This useful discovery helped identify individuals and assist police detective work in crime cases. Before his methods of DNA fingerprinting were commercialized, his laboratory was the only center in the world that carried out DNA fingerprinting and he constantly received inquiries from all over the globe. Jefferys has been rewarded several awards throughout his lifetime, ranging from being a Fellow of the Royal Society to receiving an honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Huddersfield. We decided to convince people who hate math to give fractals another chance. Since we look at fractals every day, it is difficult to ignore them. The concept of fractals has been a recent discovery. It is not very popular in the mathematical world because no one can fully understand them. However, natural geometric shapes are found everywhere in nature. Tree branches, snowflakes, even eroded coastlines are examples of fractals in nature. By exploring these designs, we can now use them to predict the weather and population sizes. Fractals can also be found in the electronics we use. Cell phone antennas and satellites are composed of fractals because they are small, compact, and use up less space while still receiving the best amount of signal they can. This is why phones and computers continue to get smaller and smaller because of new fractal technology. Without fractals, we would still have huge phones that do not have a touch screen