Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Numb3rs in L0nd0n
Instructor(s): Rachel Roe-Dale, Mathematics
How do we find x in the city? The variable, x, that is. This course applies numbers on location where we will use mathematics as a lens to explore England’s past, present, and future with applications and case studies from a variety of disciplines. In this course, we pair our quantitative explorations with museum and site visits to explore the narrative surrounding the issues pertinent to living in historical and present day London and explore how museums use objects and exhibits to tell a story about the same subject we explored quantitatively.
We begin our exploration by considering quantitative measurements of time and place as we discuss clockmaker John Harrison’s invention of the marine chronometer. Next, we look at how variables change over time by considering population and epidemic models. We examine the historical and current population trends in London, recolonization of the western coast of England by the Cornish chough (a species of crow), the spread of the plague in 16th century London and in the rural village of Eyam, and the epidemiological significance of the 1854 outbreak of cholera in London's Soho neighborhood. Other topics we investigate in the course include traffic flow, transportation networks, and the traveling salesperson problem originally proposed by the Irish mathematician Sir William Hamilton. We end the term by using our knowledge of networks to design an itinerary to visit some of London’s popular tourist sites. Students also create a final project which applies quantitative reasoning to a problem relevant to London living or history and present the problem in a simulated museum exhibition.