Zombies and Calculus
64Q1EE6EHwE • 2014-09-24
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Language: en
okay looks like the coast is clear I'm
Colin Adams and I'm making this video to
try to help you to survive the zombie
apocalypse with all the oh hang on a
second ah trouble folks real sorry uh
not going to have time to do this right
now I'll catch up with you
[Music]
later
[Applause]
[Music]
okay I think we're good let's try this
again I'm Colin Adams I'm here in my
office I'm a math professor at Williams
college or at least what's left of it at
this point and I've been out there it is
bad out there right now the number of
zombies is through the roof it's growing
really fast the number of humans is
dropping really fast and this idea of
numbers changing like that is an idea
that comes up in calculus and it's
called the derivative so the derivative
is measuring how fast quantities are
changing in this case we're interested
in how fast the number of humans is
changing and how fast the number of
zombies is changing so let's think about
what contributes to the number of
zombies at any given time and just for
convenience we're going to think of each
zombie corresponding to a red lentil so
the total number of zombies will just be
the total number of red lentils and
we're going to call that number Z what
can change that number well first of all
zombies if they can't find anybody to
eat they will eventually starve to death
and that will decrease the number of
zombies that we have on the other hand
when a zombie interacts with a human
that zombie either gets sustenance by
eating a person or that zombie can
convert somebody into a zombie which
will also increase the number of zombies
that we have so now let's talk about the
total number of humans and let's
represent each human with a brown lentil
so the total number of humans will be
equal to the total number of brown
lentils and we're going to call that
number H now unlike zombies as far as we
know humans can have babies and that
will increase the number of humans if
there's this zombie human interaction
the zombie can attack a human kill the
human and therefore the number of humans
will drop now if there's a lot of people
and a lot of zombies then there's going
to be a whole lot of interaction that is
not going to be pretty I've seen it it
is
awful ah For the Love of Newton things
are looking bad out there don't know how
much time I have I mean this situation
really reminds me of situations that
occur in nature you know think about a
wolf population and a deer population
the wolves are the Predators the deer
are the prey very similar to the
situation we're in only the zombies are
the predators and we're the prey so
let's think back to when this whole
thing started and there were lots of
people and there were just a few zombies
but those zombies had lots of people to
convert into zombies and that meant that
the number of zombies went up
dramatically as that was occurring the
number of humans was dropping
precipitously and eventually we got to a
state where there were very few humans
left and lots of zombies now that
couldn't last because of course the
zombies no longer had people to eat so
the zombes started to starve to death
until we reached a point where both the
number of humans and the number of
zombies was small in that situation the
humans had a chance to recover and the
number of humans started to increase
again now
unfortunately that meant the zombies
again could convert a lot of people into
zombies and suddenly the number of
zombies started to increase and I think
that's the situation we're finding
ourselves in now so it looks like this
is just going to repeat the number of
zombies will go up the number of people
will go down the number of people will
go up and the number of zombies will go
down like an endless cycle going on and
on and on unless we can be smart and
unless we can overcome them using our
brains H wonder who that
is yeah yeah yeah what's
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file updated 2026-02-13 13:01:24 UTC
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