The Future is Maths

When we look at the stock markets, inflation calculations, blockchain and cryptocurrencies… we owe a lot to maths.

With maths and logic thinking we have allowed the development of new technologies and the improvement of old ones.

In this article, I explore solutions that unbeknownst to us have changed our lives forever.

The Data Storage Case

If you need to backup a file on your computer, what do you do? You make a copy of it and save it in dropbox or storage like that, correct?

Although this solution works for personal files and photos, it is not efficient for large amounts of data.

So what is the data storage solution for large companies and governmental agencies?

Store the difference!

What does it mean “to store the difference”?

It means, instead of backing up each file individually, store the difference between two files.

Explanation and Logic Behind this Solution

Computers store data in a binary hard drive. Binary means 1s and 0s, which are micro transistors that are on or off (I explain this in more detail in another article).

Humans have enough 0s and 1s to reach Uranus. It is a lot of data!

Simply put, if one file that starts with 00 and another file that starts with 11, you can back up both files by storing the difference between them, so in case we lose one file, with the other file plus the backup of the difference we can rebuild the lost one.

With nothing more than a bit of logic, we have increased considerably the storage space we have.

The SHA Money

With the advent of bitcoin and the underlying technology, blockchain, we humans managed to build a way to register value in an electronic format that can substitute the gold standard for currencies, or the dollars standard even.

I explain cryptocurrencies in more detail in another article.

If you like it or not, if bitcoin will be the new monetary standard or not, we can safely say that cryptocurrencies have changed our lives and blockchain-related technologies will be deployed in several parts of our lives in the next few years.

What is cryptocurrency and blockchain a mathematical solution?

Because it is like a math engine that allows simple computers to join a network and validate and each other’s transactions. It substitutes what normally a central bank would do, but because it follows an encryption math formula called SHA256 we don’t need to have anyone trusted person or company managing this massive ledger.

SHA money is once again changing the world for the better.

Bye-Bye Photo Paper

When we switch on our phones, our computers, our televisions, and buy digital cameras, all we are doing is turning on a super-powerful calculator. In fact, so powerful nowadays that it can bend the light coming from their screens millions of times per second in every pixel available. These super math machines have consumed whole markets.

Once photography was a technology that belonged to chemists with all of the special papers and chemical solutions and what have you.

Chemical and pharmaceutical companies that failed to identify that the photography market and technology were moving from their hands and into the hands of electrical engineers have suffered dearly (like Kodak for example).

To be able to process images electronically means, once again, that maths changed the world.

Printing and Copying

I remember when teachers used mimeographs to copy pages and pages of materials for us, the pupils. Typewriters were the most important machine an office would have and both, mimeograph and typewriters, became obsolete in just a handful of years due to a special math machine called the Printer.

To be able to replicate what is on a screen on a page, you will need to deal with several mathematical problems.

To be able to create a matrix of pixels from a screen that matches one of the paper pages is an amazing achievement that has taken several years for some companies to master properly.

Once again maths forcing its hand over us.

Summary

When you take the time to understand that maths is the foundation for physics, engineering, statistics, finance, and so much more, you understand that maths is the future of all things that can become electronic.

I’m talking about the automation of industries and farms, the digitalization of money and value, the artificial intelligence that will start making decisions for us in our cars and homes, the constant improvement of the quality of our screens and mobile devices.

The meme of the day: