Jonathan Murley - Mathematics

Jonathan has been working with complicated mathematical functions often used in physics. Mathematical functions are formulas, algorithms, or graphs that allow one to calculate a variable based upon knowing the value of another one. Some common ones are logarithms or the trigonometric functions like sine and cosine which are commonly used in describing angles. With these relatively simple functions, printed tables and basic hand-held calculators can be used to calculate the values, but the more uncommon ones seldom appear on calculators and the complicated ones do not have even tables, forcing the people working with them to rely on much more complicated definitions. One type of these complicated functions, the hypergeometric functions, has a great number of applications in the sciences in that they can be used to mathematically model a variety of situations. Jonathan used a method developed at UPEI to reduce a specific type of hypergeometric function to a simpler state for easier calculation, and was able to generate a printed table with over 700 algebraic expressions to compute the function more easily.