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Geometry may be one of the oldest branches of mathematics, but it’s much more than a theoretical subject. It’s part of our everyday lives, says Professor Jennifer Taback, Professor at Bowdoin College and key to understanding many aspects of our modern world.
Architecture, mapmaking, video games, data representation, and
electoral politics are some of the real-world applications of geometry
studied by students in two classes taught by Taback in the fall 2020
semester. Both classes extend the ideas of Euclidean geometry taught in a
standard high school to include the basics of spherical and hyperbolic
geometry. In both, she emphasized modern applications of both Euclidean
and non-Euclidean geometry. 
The work of Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898–1972 from "Capturing Infinity". Reed College magazine, 2010.
- In Math 2404, students use modern approaches to geometry in order to study gerrymandering and to analyze how maps are made.
- In Math 3404: Advanced Topics in Geometry, they worked on deeper versions of the same projects, as well as some additional topics like using geometry for data visualization and understanding Escher’s artwork from a mathematical perspective. For example, the Escher (see image) is a tessellating (repeating) pattern in the hyperbolic plane.
Applications of mathematics, specifically geometry, to electoral redistricting and the challenge of combatting gerrymandering is a current topic of study among many mathematicians, pioneered by Professor Moon Duchin of Tufts University. Multiple gerrymandering cases have been heard in recent years by the Supreme Court, and shaping district boundaries has social, political, and economic impacts on society.
Mathematically, gerrymandering touches on an old mathematical problem called the isoperimetric problem, which relates the perimeter of a region to its area...
To highlight several modern applications of geometry, Taback arranged a series of special lectures given by experts from MIT, Colby, and other institutions.
Source: Bowdoin News
