CHANGE THE SUBJECT / MATHS:MATHS IS A subject with plenty of practical uses, even though it may not seem that way when you're sitting in front of a blackboard full of numbers. And yes even maths can get a facelift in TY. Who better to do it than chairman of the Irish Applied Maths Teachers' Association (IAMTA) and TY co-ordinator at Belvedere College Dublin, Oliver Murphy.

Murphy has designed a five- module course for TY. "We start with probability, which is an interesting one that students always enjoy," he says. "We look at its use in practical situations: what is the probability of being dealt four aces in a poker hand; why is it bad value to buy a lottery ticket unless the prize is over €12,000,000; why are you more likely to move seven spaces in Monopoly than any other number; if there are 23 people in a room, why is the chance that two or more of them share a birthday greater than 50 per cent?"

Murphy moves on to arithmetic sequences and series, and their applications to problems. "We look at the nth term and the sum of the first n terms of arithmetic sequences," he says. "For example, what is the total of the first 50 even numbers: 2 + 4 + 6 + . . . + 100?"

Applied maths is the next area. In fact, the IAMTA has a booklet available to teachers on teaching applied maths in TY. "This is an excellent module, even if I do say so myself," says Murphy. "We use Simpson's Rule to estimate the areas of gardens, fields, countries etc, as well as its application for finding the distance travelled by a car, given its time-velocity graphs. The four formulae governing accelerated linear motion: v = u + at, v2 = u2 +2as. We use such formulae to solve problems like: "If a car speeds up uniformly from five m/s to 17 m/s over 10 seconds, what distance does it cover?"

Module four covers linear programming and linear inequalities.

The fifth and final module is in algebra, just to keep students conscious of the looming Leaving Cert years. However, they also take part in another separate and intriguing module. "Fibonacci and the Golden Section is a separate module, done by the students themselves," says Murphy. "It starts with the Fibonacci rabbit problem: if a farmer buys a pair of baby rabbits which take two months to reach maturity, and if a pair (on average) reproduce another pair every month after that - how many rabbits will be born in the 24th month?

"The number of pairs born each month is determined by the famous Fibonacci Sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 . . . in which a term is the sum of the previous two terms. The remarkable thing about these numbers is that they turn up in nature all over the place. For example, if you count the rows of seeds in a pine cone, the number will always be a number from this Fibonacci Sequence - and if you count the rows anti-clockwise, you will get the next number in the Fibonacci Sequence."

The Fibonacci numbers appear in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code. Many students may already be familiar with them. "They are linked to the Greek idea of the Golden Ratio, sometimes called the Golden Section," says Murphy.

"For example, in the Theatre of Epidaurus, there are 34 rows of seats in the lower tier, then a break, and then 21 rows in the upper tier. The architect knew that this would divide the theatre into two sections which would be very pleasing to the eye. What is interesting to note is that 21 and 34 are consecutive terms in the Fibonacci Sequence!"

If you would like a copy of the Applied Mathematics for Transition Year module, contact Oliver Murphy at 086-3150542 or see www.iamta.ie