Common-or-Garden Ellipses In an earlier post we saw how a gardener may set out oval flower-beds using a well-known property of ellipses: the sum of the distances from any point on the ellipse to the two foci is always the same value, $latex {2a}&fg=000000$, the length of the major axis. The gardener puts down two stakes … Continue reading Drawing Multi-focal Ellipses: The Gardener’s Method →

Motivation Ireland has four provinces, the principal city in each being the provincial capital: Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Galway. The map here shows the location of these cities. Now imagine a company that needs to visit and to deliver goods frequently to all four cities. Where might they locate their HQ to minimize transport costs … Continue reading Locating the HQ with Multi-focal Ellipses →