"In the 18th century... people traveled... by boat, but the problem... was... that they were finding it very difficult to know where they were. ...[O]ne of the big problems of the 18th century was finding your position at sea. ...We have , which is the angle from the equator, and , which is the angle measured round... from London. ...I've stood on the zero longitude line in . ...[T]he first thing they cracked was latitude. So you could work out your latitude... by using... the , which measures angles very accurately... [T]hey realized that if you measured the angle between the sun and the horizon, or between the pole star and the horizon, you could... accurately find your latitude. ...[Y]ou had to use a ton of ... [i.e.,] more math, in fact trigonometry on the surface of a sphere, which is... ... [T]rigonometry and the sextant combined... meant that navigators could work out their latitude... how far above the equator they were."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
University of Cambridge alumniAcademics from the United KingdomMathematicians from the United KingdomEducators from the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Budd_(mathematician)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Christopher Budd (mathematician)
Christopher John Budd OBE (born 15 February 1960) is a British mathematician known especially for his contribution to non-linear differential equations and their applications in industry. He is currently Professor of Applied Mathematics at the , and was from 2016 to 2020.
57 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Christopher Budd (mathematician) →
Related Quotes
"View #1 about math: Math is completely useless. Another one... Mathematicians are evil, soulless geeks... [A]nother..…"
"[S]ome people are... quite frightened of math, or even... suspicious of math."
"[T]he shame about all of this is not only is it not true. It's really, really, really not true! ...Math is basically …"
"The technology that we celebrate today, everything we do, is all heavily based on math. In my pocket I have my ... ab…"
"Much of industry has problems which can potentially be formulated and solved using mathematics. ...It's numbers. It's…"
"If there wasn't air around me, I'd die very very quickly... and math is like that for technology. Take the math away,…"
"I'm going to show a picture of a mathematician... that has changed your life profoundly more than anyone I could poss…"
"The was... one of the first scientific research establishments in the U.K. ...They reckon about 30 elements were disc…"
"Faraday... wasn't a mathematician and so he relied on other people to do his math... and Maxwell... took Faraday's ex…"
"On the whole, mathematicians don't have a particularly great image."