Science: when serious names are not enough in mathematics

Listening about math can cause grief and pain. This is a feeling for all the students around the world about mathematics. There is a nursery song that says: mathematics is the science that takes your patience off.

So, is it possible to talk about having fun with names about maths?

Well, yes, let us see some cases.

There are some graphs for mathematical functions with funny names. For example, have you heard about the "popcorn function"?

This function is formally known as the “Thomas function”, “droplet function” or “stars over Babylon” because of their behaviour. The Thomas function is part of the so-called Dirichlet functions, which generate graphs of lines. Could you think in a good name for them?

A function is a mathematical tool that associates two sets of variables. In a graph, it is clear to know what it means. For example, to plot how the temperature varies throughout the days, you can put the time (days) in the horizontal axis as the independent variable and the temperature in the vertical axis as the dependent variable.

However, going back to mathematics, there are other functions that arise in final high school courses and in physical-mathematical degrees, such as the "cardioid". This curve can be easily drawn by marking a point in a circle and rolling it over another stationary one and of course, it looks like the heart shape.

You can draw the cardioid on polar paper since the independent variable is the angle of rotation. On polar paper, you can also generate a nice graph with the cosine function so that “flowers” ​​such as the “rose of the four winds” appear.

And how about the curve named “Agnesi's witch"? This curve is named after the Italian mathematician who discovered it. This curve effectively looks like a witch's hat and is constructed using a circle and the lines tangent to it.

Among the recent functions, the “Mexican hat” also appears. This function is one of the functions known as wavelets that are used for multiple approximation applications such as fingerprint analysis and recognition.

On the other hand, have you heard about “the law of the sandwich”? Well, this is a method to simplify the division of fractional expressions.

And speaking about food, do you know the “sandwich theorem”? This theorem is used to establish the functions that limit another function and is useful when you are looking to limit a behavior.

Do you know about any other function to include?