Happy Belated Birthday Rosie!

Today is the birthday of John Wilton born 1884 Belfast, Victoria, Australia.  Wilton's work focused on Analysis and Number Theory.

Today's quote is by mathematician Salomon Bochner.  He said, "The word 'mathematics' is a Greek word and, by origin, it means 'something that has been learned or understood,' or perhaps 'acquired knowledge,' or perhaps even, somewhat against grammar, 'acquirable knowledge,' that is, 'learnable knowledge,' that is, 'knowledge acquirable by learning."

Rosie is my dog.  She is a 55 pound labrador and poodle cross often referred to as a "labradoodle". On March 8th she completed her eighth year.  Her birthday celebration was brief.  The weather outside was not conducive to a long walk nor did the squirrels who were invited to the backyard attend her birthday party due to the nastiness of this year's winter.  According to the chart below, her age in "human years" is about 55 years.

Based on Rosie's age and weight, I used the orange graph and created the data plot below.

I used a graphing calculator's diagnostic capabilities to formulate an equation could be used to determine an human equivalent based on her age and weight.

The resulting formula is call a quartic function.    This particular function is f(x) = -0.001258x^4 + 0.05795529x^3 - 0.9158657x^2 + 11.0734406x + 1.17984189.  This function is just an estimate that is most accurate within the scatterplot.  The further the age moves beyond 20 actual years, the more inaccurate the function becomes.

I chose this particular model based on the Mean Squared error (MSe) of the regression.  This is a better indicator of fit that r^2 which is an analysis based on linear models.

Rosie is an awesome companion.  She is always excited to see me.  She is a great listener and has been a source of inspiration in developing scenarios of applied mathematics.  This school year has been the year of Rosie.  She has become somewhat of a cult hero.  I hope her health stays well and she continues to inspire students in my classroom.