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NCERT Solutions Ganita Prakash Chapter 1 Figure it Out — What is Mathematics?

Book page 2 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Can you think of other examples where mathematics helps us in our everyday lives?
Answer

Yes — mathematics is hidden in almost everything we do in a day. Here are examples you can discuss in class:

  • Shopping — adding up a bill, working out a discount, checking the change the shopkeeper returns.
  • Cooking — measuring flour and water, doubling a recipe for twice the number of guests.
  • Travel — reading a railway timetable, calculating speed, distance and time, estimating petrol needed.
  • Money — saving pocket money, making a monthly budget, understanding interest in a bank passbook.
  • Sports — run rate in cricket, batting average, points table, angles while playing carrom or billiards.
  • At home — measuring a room, counting tiles for a floor, finding the area of a plot of land.
  • Art and design — rangoli and kolam patterns, symmetry in temple architecture, repeating designs on a saree border.
  • Technology — barcodes and QR codes, digital photographs, weather forecasting, passwords and secret codes.
Math Talk: Make a list of every place you used a number today — from the time you woke up to the price of your snack. Compare your list with a friend's.
Q2.
How has mathematics helped propel humanity forward? (You might think of examples involving: carrying out scientific experiments; running our economy and democracy; building bridges, houses or other complex structures; making TVs, mobile phones, computers, bicycles, trains, cars, planes, calendars, clocks, etc.)
Answer

Mathematics does not only describe patterns — its explanations become tools, and those tools have changed how human beings live. A few of the biggest ways:

  • Science and space — patterns in the motion of stars and planets led to the theory of gravitation. That single explanation lets us launch satellites, run GPS on a phone and send rockets to the Moon and Mars.
  • Economy and democracy — banking, taxes, budgets, the census and the counting of crores of votes in an election all rest on arithmetic and statistics.
  • Engineering and construction — bridges, dams and tall buildings are designed with geometry and careful calculation of loads, so that they stand safely for decades.
  • Machines and devices — computers, mobile phones and TVs work on binary numbers (0 and 1) and coded signals; a bicycle's gears, a car's engine and a plane's wing are all designed mathematically.
  • Time — calendars, clocks and the prediction of eclipses come from patterns in the motion of the Sun and Moon.
  • Medicine — statistics decides whether a new medicine really works, and reading patterns in genomes helps doctors diagnose and cure diseases.
Math Talk: This question is meant for discussion. Pick one item from the list, find out one real Indian example of it (say, the Chandrayaan mission or the Statue of Unity), and tell the class what mathematics was needed for it.
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