The
first movie we watched was about the contributions of the West- Egyptian,
Babylonian and Greek- to mathematics. In the 2nd installment of the
“The Story of Maths”, the professor tackled about the contributions of the East
to mathematics and how it transformed the West.
The
first country the professor visited was China. The Chinese have contributed a
lot in mathematics. They were the first one to use the decimal system we use
today. The only difference is that they represented their numbers differently.
The next country from the East was India. The Chinese and Indian number systems
were relatively similar. They both used the decimal system and both looking for
the representation for zero. Even in the west, they had a hard time
representing zero but the Indians introduced the first symbol of zero. The
professor also showed how the Indians invented trigonometry and their new
concept of infinity and negative numbers. They were the first to know how to accurately
obtain the right angle of a given triangle. The contributions of the Middle
East to mathematics were also introduced. They were the ones that invented Algebra,
Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concept of cube.
Similar
to the first installment of the movie, I also had a hard time understanding the
explanations in the movie. It may be that the professor was so fast in
explaining or I was just slow. I had to watch the movie again to understand
what he was trying to explain. However, it is amazing that even in far
different places, mathematics is studied and new discoveries are made. These
discoveries were big help to what mathematics is now. Their discoveries may
have been a burden to some but it is very helpful in solving our problems, even
simple ones. We have a lot more to discover about math but thanks to the great
minds of people before, they made it a bit easier for us.
I don't think you were slow. I wasn't able to grasp all the information from the documentary at first. They were just too many, plus the narrator's accent makes it kind of hard for me to understand what he was talking about (especially those mathematical ideas). So I had to download the docs and watch it again, but this time I included subtitles.
ReplyDeletei agree that the movie was difficult to understand at first :D the east indeed made a lot of contributions to the math we use today. indeed, we have it easier today and we have the awesome people in the early civilizations to be thankful for. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, let us indeed thank the people who contributed to the world of Mathematics, they helped us. without them, we may not be as progressive as we are now.
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