{"id":121996,"date":"2019-02-06T11:59:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T16:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=121996"},"modified":"2019-02-08T13:18:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T18:18:51","slug":"what-i-mean-when-i-say-katharine-ott-and-harmonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/02\/06\/what-i-mean-when-i-say-katharine-ott-and-harmonic\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Mean When I Say: Katharine Ott and &#8216;Harmonic&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For most of us, <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">harmonic <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">describes a set of musical notes that produce a pleasing sound, or it describes a state of contentment. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>For Associate Professor of Mathematics <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/mathematics\/faculty-staff\/katharine-ott\/\">Katharine Ott<\/a>, harmonic describes a type of function, a mathematical way of representing the relationship between two values. Harmonic functions satisfy Laplace\u2019s equation, which itself \u201cplays a key role in describing many physical phenomena such as heat conduction, electrostatics, and fluid flow,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Ott\u2019s specialty is harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. \u201cHarmonic analysis,\u201d she adds, \u201cis a branch of mathematics that has to do with breaking a function into simpler parts that have certain properties.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_117544\" style=\"width: 910px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-117544\" class=\"size-large wp-image-117544\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42-900x643.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42-900x643.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42-400x286.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42-200x143.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/08\/140819_Katharine_Ott_Tenure_42.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-117544\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott\u2019s specialty is harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. (Sarah Crosby\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cAnalyzing these smaller pieces individually, then organizing them back together again, can yield important insights into the behavior of functions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Which brings us back to harmonics in music. If you know the rates of vibration for notes that sound related to one another \u2014 and are appealing for that reason \u2014 you&#8217;ll generally find that there are predictable mathematical relationships among them.<\/p>\n<p>Ott also works to increase the participation of women in mathematics, organizing programs for high school students and writing about math for the general public. She\u2019s currently the director of GirlsGetMath, a weeklong math and computer science camp for high school girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harmonic functions help explain physical phenomena like heat conduction and fluid flow, says Associate Professor of Mathematics Katharine Ott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":122129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[10523,10116],"class_list":["post-121996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-katharine-ott","tag-what-i-mean-when-i-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121996"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122152,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121996\/revisions\/122152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}