The Wizardry of the East

     This would be my review for the second installment of The Story of Maths. The first part of the documentary showed the contribution of the earliest periods in the subject of math. In retrospect, the second part shows the innovation of the succeeding eras to the developing world of mathematics.

     The second installment of the documentary started with the Ancient Chinese civilization. Ancient China is greatly associated with maths. This can attributed to the knowledge that the empires have put great importance in math. Like their predecessors, mathematics was part of their daily lives. The Chinese also developed the decimal system from Egypt, and have made the decimal place value system. This system would make an impact in the world of mathematics. To the Chinese, numbers were part of their lives in more ways than one. The Yellow Emperor believed that numbers have cosmic significance and made it a point to include it in his ruling. This magnitude of importance of math was evident on every ruling dynasty. The effort put into maths gave way to the conception of geometric progression.

     India would later have their spotlight with the introduction of zero as a number. This would forever change the number system and solve all the mysteries and problems encountered by previous periods. The involvement of India in mathematics further defined math. The Indians have found ways to interpret or explain the rather complicated aspects of the subject. Their great minds gave light to the “dark” side of math with their inventions of the negative numbers, trigonometry and the number pi. Their contributions answered many, many years of searching and rigorous ponderings to the seemingly unanswerable problems or that boggled the minds of mathematicians.

    Asia continued its streak of great innovations in maths with the involvement of the Middle East. The Middle Easterns were interested in the ancient studies of mathematics and translated ancient texts for further use. Mathematics was apparent in not only their studies, but also in their architecture. Every imaginable geometric figure can be found in the walls of their homes, buildings, infrastructures, among others. This custom/tradition still continues to today. The Middle Easterns are credited with many a great innovation in the world of maths. The Hindu-Arabic number system that is widely used, maybe the most used number system in the world, originated from them. One of the most important fields of mathematics, Algebra, came from the genius mind of Al - Khwarizmi. Al - Khwarizmi's invention would later become one of the fundamentals of maths. As the Babylonians have quadratic equations, the Middle Easterns were responsible to the emergence of cubic equations and problems.

     Focus would later be back on Europe when Renaissance dawned upon Italy. This enlightened period in Europe saw the triumph of another mathematician when Fibonacci developed a trend in a sequence of numbers. This discovery would later be named after him – the Fibonacci sequence. Public awareness and interest of knowledge made paths to never-thought-of innovation (or certain innovations that seemed unimaginable) in the past. Mathematical competition started in Bologna. This development would forever change the public's perspective of math. The Italian mathematicians made it a point to continue unfinished innovations from their predecessors. Whereas the Middle Easterns started cubic equations, the Italians made final revisions on it.

     The continuation of the legacies left by the first contributors of maths made great impact and changed the course of maths. Further innovations showed how mathematics have become part of people's lives, whether they are aware or not (awareness present or not). This innovations opened more doors for further development of mathematics.