[Real Life Maths] Heat Wave

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The Maths In Real Life

Let us look at how mathematics manifests itself in real life scenarios. For this particular post I took a news article from Today's Times of India (Delhi Edition). As you read this article, I will reveal some cool aspects of mathematics and pose a few questions for you to think about. I promise, it will be a good journey.

And, if you get inspired...you can too create some questions and reveal the maths you see in this post.

I have edited the post a bit to remove some parts. At the end, I have provided a link to the full article.

May 27 2015 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Fiery heat for 6 more days...

Observe the pictorial representation of temperatures in the image above. It is not a 'bar' graph. What would you call it? A "triangle" graph, maybe? This shows that bar graphs (or histograms) are just one way to represent data pictorially. 

Question: What do you think is the % change in temperature over the 5-day period? 





The capital remained on the roast pit for the fifth (... an ordinal number) straight (= consecutive) day , with the maximum temperature (over a 24 hour period) a fiery 45 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. The weatherman held out both good and bad news for Delhiites - heavy showers could be on the horizon but are likely to hit (Do you probability here? So, we are not sure that it will rain.) the city after another six scorching days, around June 2. 

Questions:

1. For how many minutes or hours was the temperature more than 45 degrees?
2. What was the average temperature on Tuesday? What was the median temperature?
3. How is the probability of rain predicted? On what factors (variables) does it depend?

Palam continued to be the hottest of hotspots in NCR with a high of 46.3 degrees C on Tuesday, followed by Gurgaon and Ayanagar at 45.5 and the Ridge at 45.3.

Questions:

1. On what factors does the temperature within a 50 kilometer radius depends? Are these factors natural or man made?
2. Is there any correlation between the number of trees in a region to the temperature of that region?

“Delhiites can expect major relief from the heat from June 2, when there are indications of good showers in the region which may last till June 4. Thereafter, easterly winds are likely to replace the hot westerlies, which would have a cooling effect,“ he said.

Questions:

1. By how much is the temperature expected to fall during and after the rains?
2. What is the difference in the temperature of the hot westerlies and cool easterlies?

Day temperatures have been at least 4 degrees above normal in Delhi since Friday .Heat wave conditions have been declared on Monday and Tuesday . Heat wave conditions are met when the maximum temperature either touches 45 degrees or is five degrees above normal.

Questions:

1. How do we define what is the "normal" temperature of a city?
2. Why is 45 degrees chosen as the temperature to declare heat wave condition? Why not 44 or 46?

 The air is dry with no hint of moisture. Humidity levels on Tuesday were just 1839%,“ the official said.

Question:

1. There is an obvious error in the news article. The humidity levels cannot be 1839%. What would be your estimate of the humidity level on Tuesday - 0.1839%, 1.839% or 18.39%? And, why?

There has been no relief in the evenings too. “At 5.30 in the evening on Tuesday , we recorded a scorching 43 degrees at Safdarjung and 44 degrees at Palam. That shows very high heating of land is taking place,“ the official said.

Question:

1. This part indicates that usually the temperature at 5:30 PM is expected to be lower than the temperature in the afternoon. If we drew a curve depicting the temperatures during a 24 hour period, where would you expect a peak? Would there be more than one peaks?

Link for complete article: Click HERE

BTW: Mathematics is an integral part of a weatherman's life. Weatherman studies the changes in nature and environment both at local and global levels. And, this study is based on a lot of serious maths.