Clock Mathematics

Introduction

Every so often on my Seven Days In blog an old piece surfaces which I think sounds interesting. The two words Clock Mathematics really caught my eye and you know I have a little interest in numbers and the mathematics that I am capable of understanding.

THis was the first thread on Google that mentioned Clock Mathematics, or, more to the point Clock Arithmetic, but it is the same sort of thing.

This page has some interesting tasks that bend your mind a little to work in Modulo 7 amongst others.

Simon Singh is an amazing author responsible for "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" and "The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography" which have long titles but are very good reads, and you will learn a lot from them as well as being thoroughly entertained.

I chose just one small piece of knowledge from his books and they are full of things like that. They are true adventures in numbers and mathematics.

My blog posts are good because they remind me that I wrote about interesting things then and I try to do that now.

And so on to the original Seven Days In post from 2018.

Clock Mathematics

Thursday 7 June 2018

I was completely unaware of (or had forgotten about) the concept of clock mathematics. We all use it every day and when used in applied mathematics it can apparently be very useful. Basically it's working with a limited series of numbers which roll over when you get to the end. So an example that we may use every day is that if you say that you will see someone in four hours at eleven o' clock you both know you will meet at three o'clock. Therefore 11 + 4 = 3, not 15 because after 12 we roll back to 1. Apparently, it's useful in Elliptical Theory. This is another concept that I have been (re) introduced to in Simon Singh's brilliant "Fermat's Last Theorem", and another reason why I love reading books.

As I'm writing this the sun has really come out and it's looking like a definite walk into work today.

Yesterday I put Half Man Half Biscuit's "Trouble over Bridgewater" and it has some great titles that maybe the songs don't quite live up to such as "Uffington Wassail" , but "Irk The Purists" is good and then I got hit with the absolute classic "Gubba Lookalikes" which is followed by the excellent "Mathematically Say" but then we are hit with the totally brilliantly funny "With Goth On Our Side" plagiarising Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side".

The opening line is:

"Oh my name it is Dai Young"

And that is a brilliant play on words when the song is based in Wales and its subject matter.

But I will share "Gubba Lookalikes" with you before I set out for work.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading. I know this is a recycled story, but I think it may be something that sparks your intellect. It does make me happy that things that I have documented in the past still capture my interest, so it means that Seven Days In has proved a mine of unexpected information for me, and it shows that I have forgotten a lot that I have written, but I love the revisits.

I hoped that it would inspire me to write a book, but it provides source material for my Vocal stories and Vocal has provided the source from my books.

These are the album that the music comes from and the book that contained the concept of Clock Mathematics.