why is it useful to know something about the shape of a set of numbers?
26943
It appears that the question period has expired.  If you have received an answer that meets your needs, please choose one of those as a 'best answer.'  If you haven't received a good answer for your question, you may want to consider the following,\n\n1) Re-post your question.  Newer questions get more activity on Yahoo! Answers than old ones.\n2) If you do re-post your question, consider why it wasn't answered the first time.  Could it be more specific?  Could it be worded better? Were there grammatical or spelling errors? Was it in the best category?\n\nIf it doesn't seem likely that re-posting your question will help you, then here's a listing of my favorite 'answer sites'.  Maybe one of them will help you.\n\nAnswers.com http://www.answers.com/\nBartleby http://www.bartleby.com/\nYahoo Reference http://education.yahoo.com/reference/\nHowStuffWorks http://www.howstuffworks.com/\nWikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page\n\nSince I really haven't answered your question, it is not necessary to give me any points.  Regards.
978240
A key or legend on a map gives you the perspective you need to truly use the map for its intended purpose. It gives the ratio of the maps dimensions. (How many inches to the mile etc.) It tells you the type of roads or terrain that are displayed on the map. It gives you the meaning of the symbols used on the map such as schools or hospitals etc. Without it it is just a well drawn picture of a an area. Without it you can not estimate or use the map to plan in detail trips or strategies.
918264
IF you mean like an ordered pair it is a point on a graph.  An example is:  (x,y)  so you can have (3,5)  or (-7,-88)  Otherwise I'm not sure what you're talking about.
829979
The study of shapes generally falls under the subject of geometry. Geometry is important because it makes our lives very easy. Look around you. Everything that has been made in factories, from your table and computer to your door and the car outside on the road, all of it is made of several parts that have to have the exact shape to fit into each other. Do you think if the makers of these things did not know about shapes they would be able to build all these wonderful things. I don't think so.
184513
The human eye is naturally attuned to seeing patterns in your environment -- in motion, in background, etc.  This was an important survival skill for our primitive ancestors who needed to be able to recognize a tiger hiding in the undergrowth before the tiger recognized them.\n\nNowadays we tend to separate out significant or otherwise interesting patterns from the background clutter, and because we take note of these more than the rest, we tend to think them significant.  Try an experiment and write down EVERY number you see for an entire day, and then figure out if there are any odd patterns.  This means EVERY time you look at the clock, every number you see on the television, every license plate, etc.\n\nChances are you'll see that you're actually viewing thousands of uninteresting numbers each day, but only taking note of the repeating ones.  On the other hand, if you are seeing more repeating patterns than by random chance, then yes, it could mean something very interesting indeed.\n\nOtherwise, it's just you  :)
274007
One reason is to be able to detect deformalities. Another is to understand what factors influence growth and development (proper nutrients, health care etc..).
905205
To get useful information out of it.
231249
You may never have to know the sine of an angle in real life, but the point of your math classes is to teach you how to think logically. What the different subjects show you is their applications in the real world. If you become an English teacher, you won't need to know the area under a curve.\n\nBut the thing with math is that the numbers provide a numerical visual for the concepts. When you get the right answer, you can see how the concept works via that example (sometimes called a "problem" or a "question"). And that's it. It's somewhat akin to writing a paper - you make a thesis statement, and then follow by offering proof/support of your statement. You're showing why your statement works by using words. Math often uses numbers for the same purpose.
112490
Because the numbers after the decimal (to the right of) represent less than one. One times a number is that number. Less than one times a number is only a fraction of that number.\n\nMake sense?
127169
When we are trying to understand many things in the real world, like the design of machinery, or electrical systems, or the weather, we end up with many variables. Examining the system in the space of its variables is very useful; that is, one assigns a dimension to each variable, and draws pictures and analyzes the surfaces and shapes in the space of variables. If there are more than 3 variables, which there usually are, one is in a very high dimensional space.\n\nYou could not solve or analyze very many real world problems without using high dimensional analyses, such as geometry, topology, etc.
43907
Because geometry is part of life. Just look around you and see all the geometric shapes that you just take for granted. Not only man-made objects, but in nature also.
907694
I'm not sure if I get your question right, but I think you're referring to lookup tables (or LUTs).  I think the easiest way to explain the use of these, is through an example from the old days.  Twenty years ago (or so), it took a long time to calculate the sine of an angle.  So if you needed to make a lot of calculations with sines in them, what you did was: calculate the sines of each of the 360 degrees (or more if you needed a better precision) and store the results in an array.  If you then needed the sine of n, all you needed to do is look up the value of the n'th entry in the array --which was a lot faster and therefore efficient than calculating the value.\n\nOf course, this only helped if you needed to calculate a sine more than 360 times, otherwise you wouldn't win back the overhead of pre-calculating all those sines.\n\nHTH.\n\nPS: a conclusion of what I wrote should be that using arrays with[in] loops does NOT *always* improve efficiency.
1036258
It refers to the finding of FRACTALS by Mandelbrot... There are Mandelbrot and Juliet fractals... every natural form has a formula from clouds to trees to people... It is the first clue that our existence is mathematically founded...This is a new form of math founded in the 1980's Mandelbrot is still alive and teaching...\n\nFractal math is used by our computers in graphic enhancing... It is proof of reproduction from adult to child... quit fascinating I wrote a 20 page paper on it.... God speaks math to create the universe!!!!! Google FRACTALS and you find more than you need!!!! Mandelbrot is a genius!!!!! Juliet even more, He would have discovered it if computers were around in the 1800's!!!!\n\nI alwaz have fractals as my wallpaper on my computer desktop!!!! they are beautiful and each color represents a distance from zero and zero is the color black!!!!!!!!!!!
933605
I suppose advantages are bing able to calculate the circumfrence and area of the circle faster. You can go n to calculate pi to more decimal places... otherwise, you're wasting your time. Go on and study more advanced math!! rock on!
6156
It will be used for cryptography. As you know, pi has no real sequence in which the numbers occur. Therefore, they can be predicted easily. This is makes them an assect to be exploited in cryptography. In fact, the famous blowfish algorithym is based on the ramdon hex values of pi.
121829
because it is math..try going to this site \n\nhttp://www.quickmath.com/
243807
Combinatorics (as well as most mathmatics) play a very practical role in computer science when it comes to programming and algorithm design.  For example if I was to create a program that designed LAN networks.  I would need to know the number of computers and the number of connections each computer had.  (for example each computer has 2 unique nic cards).  Then I would use combinatorics to count the number of unique connections that exist in the LAN and from that I would know if there is a feasible design.\n\nhope that makes sense.