A Note on Applications of Mathematics, with Special

Reference to Fashion Technology

Madhusudan Singh

Institute of Professional Studies, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India

Email: smadhu math@rediffmail.com

Abstract
Mathematics ‘Purest of the Pure Science’ traditionally known as ‘Dirty and Dust’ is actu-
ally a subject of ‘Beauty and Trust’. On one hand it is the back-bone of the field of knowledge,
and on the other hand each face of the universe is governed by some mathematical rule. Math-
ematics on which various disciplines of science and technology are found to rest is continuously
extending its domain of influence on other branches of knowledge. Present note is a little effort
to throw some light on different applications of mathematics, for the betterment of society,
with special reference to its wide applications in fashion technology, an emerging subject of
the field of knowledge.

1 Overview
Mathematics has diversified and specialized to such an extent that it is very difficult for an ordinary
brain to say or even attempt to comment about what is happening in various fields of mathematics,
these days. To the question, ‘How much do the awardees (the Fields Medalists of 2010) understand
the work of each other?’, Elon Lindenstrauss (Hebrew University), one of the four Fields Medalists,
says, ‘No one really knows completely even a tiny bit of mathematics but it is quite clear that there
are connections between many parts of mathematics’. In an answer to the same question, the Rolf
Nevanlinna Prize winner for this year, Daniel Spielman (Yale University) says, ‘We can understand
each other’s work at some level but to understand deeply it takes, perhaps years’.
Total mathematical activity may be divided into two categories. One of these is driven by purely
aesthetic considerations, where the mathematics is created just out of curiosity, without caring for
its potential applications. This one is like the soul of mathematics and is often termed as ‘Pure
Mathematics’. Beautiful theorems in number theory fall into this category. Carl Friedrich Gauss,
one of the all-time great mathematicians, when he called mathematics the ‘queen of sciences’ went
on to add that number theory was the ‘queen of Mathematics’. Euclid’s question, posed to himself,
‘is the collection of all prime numbers a finite collection?’ and his proof to show that it is not, is a
beautiful piece of work of this category. The incompleteness theorem of Kurt Godel, ‘No infinite
set of axioms is strong enough to prove all of the true facts about the natural numbers’, which he
proved in 1930, is another work of this category.
The second category of mathematical activity is the one where the mathematician is also
concerned with possible applications of the existing knowledge in mathematics. Much of the
mathematics is created from interactions with other fields of human activity. Calculus was born
0 Institute of Professional Studies, University of Allahabad, India
like this and has tremendous application in modeling various phenomena, through differential
equations. A piece of mathematical work, which has found its applications in real life, is put into
the second category and labelled as ‘Applied Mathematics’.
But mathematics is only mathematics, whether it has found its application or not. A great
mathematician of 20th century, G.H. Hardy has said, ‘A mathematician is like a painter or poet,
a maker of patterns, some of these patterns have immediate and obvious applications whereas the
others might take even centuries before they get application’. Ellipse was known to Greeks more
than 2000 years ago before Kepler, but when Kepler mentioned his three laws of planetary motion,
it came into prominence.
The recipient of the Carl Friedrich Gauss prize in mathematics for 2011, Y. Meyer (Ecole
Normale Superieure de Cachan, France) when asked, ‘How pure is pure mathematics?’, replied
‘The division between pure and applied mathematics does not exist any more. For instance,
in image processing, one has practical problems, which on linearizing give rise to a problem of
pure mathematics’. Meyer got the prize for fundamental contributions to number theory, operator
theory, harmonic analysis and for his pivotal role in the development of wavelets and multiresolution
analysis(MRA), which facilitated the medical sciences by providing a powerful tool to get MRI .
It is a common knowledge that mathematical sciences are a major player in the scientific and
technological developments of our civilization. Traditional role of a mathematician as an educator
and researcher in abstract realm of mathematics is undergoing significant changes. Mathematics is
becoming indispensable in every scientific discipline and consequently mathematicians are becom-
ing professionals. There are many examples: mathematics in engineering helps to create the best
technological designs, industrial mathematics improves products and optimizes the production,
mathematicians develop the methods for tracking and guiding, such as in air traffic control and
military applications, mathematical modeling in medicine helps to understand better the functions
of organs and to develop new medical procedures, in pharmaceutical sciences, mathematics is a
tool to design new drugs and test their efficiency, in atmospheric and earth sciences, mathematical
models are used to predict weather and analyze climatic changes, in epidemiology, the mathe-
matical models help us to prepare ourselves for major epidemic outbreak (avian flu, AIDS, etc.).
Predictions in economy and world of finances also depend heavily on mathematics and statistics.
The work of many of the Nobel laureates in economics is dependent on mathematics. The
National Research Council of America has identified more than ten major themes in biological
research only, where the mathematics is playing an important role, viz.
Cell organization, ecology and ecosystem, evolution and diversity, genome organization and
expression, growth and development, immune systems pathogens and host defences, integrative
approaches to organism function and diseases, molecular structure and function, neurobiology
and behavior, industrial biotechnology, plant biology and agriculture. Mathematical biology, like
mathematical physics and mathematical chemistry, is a highly interdisciplinary area.
Traditional areas of mathematics which are being used in biology include:
Bifurcation theory, Perturbation theory, Stability methods for dynamical systems, Topological
methods for knots arising in DNA dynamics and structure, Pattern recognition algorithms (e.g. in
medical diagnosis), Continuum mechanics and Input-output analysis of systems.
In fact it is impossible to exhaust the list of applications of mathematics and it won’t be an
exaggeration if we say that mathematics has penetrated every scientific discipline. A remark by
Leonardo da Vinci is very appropriate to surmise ‘no human investigation can claim to be scientific
if it does not pass the test of mathematics’.

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 Mathematics has been changing. At the time of Galileo, there were two different approaches to
solving mathematical problems, geometry and algebra. Rene Descartes united these approaches.
Descartes invention of a method to make algebraic formulae and equations visible as geometric
shapes was the greatest among his many contributions to mathematics. But they were unable to
write down an equation describing the movement of a body at variable speed. This was achieved a
century later by Newton and Leibnitz, independently. Calculus, a gateway to ‘higher mathematics’
was thus invented. Many problems were solved and motion of planets, moons were explained to
the smallest details. Some of the prominent names associated with these events are of Laplace,
Euler, Lagrange and Hamilton. Impressive successes made scientists believe that the universe was
governed according to the Newtonian laws of motion.
But how to predict the observed behavior of gases, i.e., ’gaslaw?’ British mathematician Ian
Stewart points out, ‘to set up the equations is one thing, to solve them quite another’. This was
resolved by the great physicist of the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell and the new branch
of science called ‘Statistical Mechanics’ was invented. By the end of the 19th century, scientists
had two different mathematical tools to model natural phenomena-exact deterministic equations
of motion for simple systems and the equations of thermodynamics, based on statistical analysis
of average quantities, for complex systems. But both these techniques featured linear equations.
Whenever nonlinear equations appeared, they were immediately ‘linearized’.
In 20th century, the emphasis shifted to try and understand the global and large scale behavior,
and because global behavior is more difficult to understand, much of it is done qualitatively, and
the topological ideas became very important. Here the name of Henri Poincare shines like the
polar star. He did pioneering work and forecasted that topology would be an important ingredient
in 20th century mathematics. A towering figure of that period David Hilbert did not think so, and
this was the reason that topology hardly figured in his list of problems.
One of the Poincare’s great inventions was ‘the qualitative theory of differential equations’.
Poincare used topological concepts to analyse the qualitative features of complex dynamical sys-
tems and, in doing so, laid the foundations for the mathematics of complexity that would emerge a
century later. By showing that simple deterministic equations of motion can produce unbelievable
complexity that defies all attempts at prediction, Poincare challenged the very foundations of New-
tonian mechanics. Among the problems Poincare analysed was the famous three-body problem in
celestial mechanics-the relative motion of three bodies under their mutual gravitational attraction.
A few years after Poincare published his work on the three-body problem, Max Planck discov-
ered energy quanta and Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity. For the next
half-century, physicists and mathematicians were fascinated with the revolutionary developments
in quantum physics and relativity theory.
In the second half of the 20th century, the dynamical system theory, based on the work of
Poincare, again became prominent. The study of ‘phase portraits’, existence of strange attractors
and ‘fractal geometry’ of Benoit Mandelbrot became popular to describe and analyse the complexity
of the irregular shapes in the natural world around us.
What may be the future directions of mathematics in the present century? Experts feel that
the emphasis may be on understanding the complex large structures. It is expected that the most
spectacular things will come from applications; especially from biological sciences. Regarding the
physical sciences, Michael Atiyah (Fields medalist 1966) has said, ‘21st century might be era of
infinite dimensional mathematics, where one has to understand properly the analysis, geometry,
topology and algebra of various non-linear function spaces, in such a way as to get quite rigorous
proofs of all the beautiful things the physicists have been speculating about’.
In the next sections, I will present some applications of mathematics, specially in the field of

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fashion technology.

2 How Does Math Work in Fashion Everyday?

Some may doubt that they will ever use math after high school or college, but some industries
require having a head for numbers. The fashion industry is not just about clothing, shopping and
models; it has a lot of math incorporated into the day-to-day operations.

2.1 Measurements
Measurements are necessary in order to create the clothing. They are vital to making sure the
clothes will fit models showing the clothing. Also, it is important that the measurements are
tailored correctly for the customers.Any incorrect measurement may create a lot of trouble.

2.2 Proportions
Some outfits are cut in a specific way and designed for a particular type of body. Certain models are
chosen to wear particular items based upon their proportions compared to the cut of the clothing.
The measurements of the model and the clothing need to coincide, which is where using math
comes in practice .

2.3 Return on Investment

When designers buy the materials to create the clothes, they need to make sure that their return
is substantial enough to cover all the costs of the initial investment as well as create a substantial
profit. Math plays an important role in calculating the profit.

2.4 Inventory
Stores that sell the clothing use math to decide how many of each piece of clothing they want to
sell in each store. So as to not have a backlog of inventory, they compare the quantity of pieces
sold and the amount that is in stock to what was initially ordered.Proper inventory management
is an essential job for fashion industry.This requires, the exact knowledge of elementary Calculus
followed by some Algebra.

2.5 Cost of Item

Designers need to decide the price of their clothing. In addition, the stores use math to decide how
much to charge for the clothing and how and when to put a discount on it. Some times the idea
of successive discounts plays a major role for the fashion industry.

2.6 Expenses
Math is used to calculate the amount needed to spend for fabric, hangers, thread and various
other items needed in the fashion industry. In addition, calculations also are made to determine
production costs to make the clothing.Here equation solving techniques are necessary to meet the
future challenges.

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 Apart from these,optimization mathematical techniques such as : Linear Programming Prob-
lems , Sequencing and Network Analysis, Game Theory, Queue Theory, Transportation and As-
signment Problems etc are helpful at the level of management to cope the day to day problems of
fashion industry.

3 How do fashion designers use math?

Fashion design is not sitting at an easel drawing pretty dresses all day, it’s a complex job that
requires artistic, technical, and business skills. All aspects require arithmetic and math. Most
notably, math is used in Pattern design and drafting. Patterns are drafted using measurement
charts and complex math. It’s not easy to turn something flat, such as paper or fabric, and make
it into a three dimensional shape, the human body! Drafting is a series of measurements and and
calculations.
For example, to draft the front neck you take the neck circumference and divide by three, to
draft the shoulder dart you need the bust measurement and divide by eight. The bust level is one
half of the shoulder to the waist plus 2 inches up. for small sizes, less for larger sizes. To draft the
correct fullness for skirt you take the waist measurement and multiply it by the ratio of fullness
you want, for a ball gown skirt it’s 25 times the waist so a 25 inch waist times 2.5=62.5 inches
of fabric. Since no fabric is that exact width, one must divide into a front skirt and a back skirt,
or 31 and a quarter inches, which is now easier to fit on fabric for cutting. This will be further
reduced for placing the pattern piece on the fold of the fabric, down to one quarter the original
62.5 inches. Math is also used for grading a pattern, that is, taking the small skirt and adjusting
the size upwards so it fits different sizes. this uses percentages and ratios to calculate how much
of a difference there is between sizes and where to add the difference.
For fun we incorporate complex math principles into our designs, from Fibonacci sequences to
fractal sets such as Mandelbrot’s, Y-trees, and Julia sets. These can become patchworks, they can
become prints for fabrics, or they can form ruffles. Sometimes they become things that don’t look
like clothes until they are placed on the body.
It also used to calculate how much fabric to purchase, and it’s also used in the business end
of design, material costs, profit margins, manufacturing costs, the boring stuff that means the
difference between paying the loan on time and declaring bankruptcy.
The importance of finding the slope? In fashion design the correctness of slope of a straight line
can make or break the drape of skirt. The correct slope will give a skirt that flows from the body,
the wrong slope will give you a skirt that sticks out like a christmas tree branch. And don’t get
started on dividing fractions into fractions: fashion design is one of the only jobs where you divide
fractions into fractions when scaling patterns up and down. This requires much deep Arithmetics
and Geometry for a successful design.

4 Geometry in Fashion Design

Are you one of those students who would prefer to throw way your Math text book because you
are into fashion design and dream of the day when you become a fashion designer? Do you think
that taking Math is a bummer and who needs it anyway? Math is such a central part of our lives;
we really can’t avoid it, even if we want to. We use it in so many ways and don’t even call it Math.
One can to an excellent beautiful work in tapestry, which is all based on Algebraic formulas. One
can make a quality design only by the knowledge of perfect symmetry, which is a tool of Geometry.
So if you are planning a career in fashion design or textiles, don’t toss out the math book and

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definitely don’t garbage your geometry set; you will need them. Let’s take a look at where that
geometry set and the knowledge that goes along with it will come in handy:

4.1 Shapes
Angles in design are important, for example; gored skirts, V-necklines, asymmetrical hems, etc. In
order to design aesthetically appealing outfits, geometry is used to make these appealing patterns.
Designers use geometry principles to create these new designs.

4.2 Prints
Geometry in colour is fashionable and sophisticated. An outfit that is more suitable for the office
or the business world may well be in a geometrical print fabric. Basic concept of portioning a set
into disjoint equivalence classes plays a crucial role in making your dress colorful. Each equivalence
class corresponds a different color according to design, phaded colors are the intersection of the
two or three as required.

4.3 Foundations of design

Design, regardless of what you’re designing, it is based on geometry. It is fundamental to designing
fashion and many other things. Without geometry the beautiful and alluring designs we see in the
market would not exist. We would just wear plain old sacks and even that is based on a rectangle.
There is no escaping it; we need math in our lives. So prepare for that math test; do well in it
because the geometry problems you get can be applied to real life matters in our careers and in
our daily lives.

5 Conclusions
We are fully aware that, in this note, we have not even mentioned many important branches
of mathematics, including its companion statistics, which has tremendous scope and potential,
because partly it is impossible to cover everything. But in a companion semi technical note,
applications many branches of mathematics and statistics will be explored .

References
[1] B. Rai, Inaugural Lecture, ICMD-2011, Allahabad, India .
[2] H. I. Freedman, Deterministic mathematical models in population ecology, HIFR, Consulting Ltd.,
Edmonton, 1987.
[3] B. Rai and W. Krawcewicz,Calculus With Mapples, Narosa Publications, China 2010 .
[4] B. Rai and Madhusudan Singh, Romancing with Numbers, Unpublished .
[5] B. Rai and Madhusudan Singh, Mutualism : A most desirable interaction for permanence of multispeciec
ecological communities, Afr. Mat ,25(2014),pp.251-266 .