How can maths help me decorate our Christmas tree?

When it comes time for my family to decorate the fir tree, it’s less about elegant design and more about trying to cram on as many baubles as possible. I do sometimes pine (pun intended) for a perfectly adorned Christmas tree – and apparently there is indeed a rigorous trigonometric formula for getting one.

Students at the University of Sheffield – I imagine this is how they get into the festive spirit – have put together their top-notch noggins to create a formula that calculates the exact amount of baubles and tinsel your family needs according to the height of your tree.

(Yeah, I don’t understand that equation either, but luckily their website has its own little calculator)

We’ve not tried it in my house yet, but apparently it works well enough for UK department store Debenhams to adopt the formula for its personal shopper program. Of course, there are other things to consider when looking to buy and decorate the perfect Christmas tree – using new-style LED lights, since they’re less likely to explode in a terribly un-festive fashion (and they’re better for the environment), avoiding plastic trees – the whole thing seems a little stressful, no?

The mathematical formula sure does save you some hassle, but it also takes some fun out of it, not letting your kids be, ahem, ‘creative’ with their choices, and takes away the traditional arguments about what goes where, and who gets to scale the heights to place the star on top.

About Tom

Tom Baker is a recent graduate from University of Derby's joint Creative Writing and Media Writing programmes. He has written lots of short stories, a whole mess of music writing, two poems, and a song about a mentally ill playwright.

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