Pleased To Meet You

Pleased To Meet You

A Movie Review on BBC The Story of Maths: The Language of the Universe

            Mathematics in Asia, North and South America, Australia and all over the world is the same. Even in space stations, the Math used there is the same as the Math used here. Mathematics hundreds of years ago is still the same with the Math today --- except that Math today has been generalized already along the way. The Story of Maths is a four-part movie documentary tackling the development of Math from its ancient basis to the analytical subject that we now are studying. In the first instalment of the Documentary, Marcus du Sautoy, the presenter, dwells on the development of Mathematics from Egypt to Babylon to Greece.

            In Egypt, he explained how the Egyptians came up with the beginning fragments of Mathematics through observations on the flooding in the Nile River. Because the flooding of the Nile affects them economically, they had to find a way to avoid the next incident. It’s like, economic problems led the way for them to take baby steps to innovate Math. These baby steps included shapes, binary numbers and fractions. Present time-telling was explained to be from Babylon’s 60-base number system. It was also given point that to measure their land, they used quadratic equations. In Greece, it is known that it is the place for the great mathematicians who have turned the somehow unorganized way of Mathematics to the analytical concept that we know and study today. These great mathematicians include Pythagoras, Plato, Archimedes and Euclid.

            This first part of the Story of Maths is full of the ancient history of the development of Math. It is actually entertaining to watch especially with all the animations that make the illustration of examples of explanations more effective. It is just distressing because the presenter is trying his best to make the explanation of the history of Math enjoyable and interesting yet I was not very into the discussion at that moment (from human errors by 99% such as sleeping late). However, I still found some parts fun. I was amazed in the way they denote their numbers (the scroll, staff, etc.). I mean, it must take a long time to write numbers in that way [with precision] and to perform basic operations using those characters. But then, they find ways.

            It really is good to know the history of some things, most especially subjects that you think you don’t really like (e.g. Math). The understanding that it leaves us after an episode opens our mind to deeper analysis and knowledge that we can share to others and can still probably open our minds to new discoveries and information. It is only in the misunderstanding that some things appear unappealing. Once we try to understand, sometimes, we find ourselves actually going with the flow of the thought. So, let us give ourselves the chance to meet Mathematics --- the language of the universe.