Math: A Tool to Build or To Destroy

    The second episode of The Story of Maths talked about ancient China, India, the Middle East, and a little bit about Europe. A lot of the time during this episode, Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, mentions that a lot of the ideas made famous by people from the west were actually discovered by the mathematicians from the east at least two centuries before. He discussed how Chinese people found a way to determine the value of pi and how they invented a Sudoku-like game. He also talked about how the Indians were the first to touch on the matter dealing with zero, negative numbers, and infinity. They were the first to use a symbol to represent zero. The video also discussed about the Hindu Arabic numerals and how it changed Europe. There was also this part about the Mathematician, Tartaglia, whose discovery about solving cubic equations got stolen by Cardano. This idea was then named after Cardano later on. This caused Tartaglia to become depressed. He died witnessing someone else taking the credit for his life’s work.

      

     Math, I guess, really is a powerful thing in that it could build people but it could also destroy people. Math is the primary foundation the Chinese build the great wall upon, the Indians applied mathematics in their businesses in the form of Algebra, but then because of the desire to gain fame someone chose to destroy someone else’s life—someone who actually poured so much effort within a big chunk of their life to achieve their goal. In the end, truly, it all depends upon the person using it. Math really is just a tool, a powerful tool and as the famous line from the movie, Spiderman, goes: “With great power comes great responsibility.”