ABSTRACT
Every artifact around us was designed and built with the help of numerical measurements and calculations, whether simple or advanced. Basic arithmetic and geometry show up as well in daily activities such as calculating the tip for a restaurant meal or finding the area of a room. Apart from its own standing as a special area of knowledge and research, math is also an essential scientific tool. Science could not function without the quantitative and analytical capabilities math provides, combined with observation and experiment. Mathematical thinking has been less dominant in biomedicine than in physics, but it is important in epidemiology to study how infectious diseases spread. Persistence & Vision gives a brief but effective introduction to the subject and the application of math to a problem with definite real-world, even life-and-death, consequences. Research can indeed have political ramifications, and math itself can be politicized in the public arena through manipulated statistics and rigged elections.
