Understanding the misunderstood

 In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

                                                                        -John von Neumann

              

                I agree in what has been said above. For me, mathematics was just a subject.  In class, I just compute, follow the steps how equations were solved and pass the subject. I did not understand why is it done, how did it became like that and what is its essence. I just thought of math as something that makes students’ life harder. But what is math really? How did it start? I never thought that math also has a story of itself.

             We watched the first part or episode of the British television series entitled “The story of maths. The movie was presented by Marcus du Sautoy, a professor in the University of Oxford.  The movie showed the history of math and its importance. It focuses on the three ancient civilizations who were the inventors of math which are the:  Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Greeks.

            In the first part of the movie, the Egyptian civilization was featured. It was very remarkable how the Egyptians thought of numbers as a way of solving their common problems. They recorded the happenings over a period of time and drew a pattern out of it. They counted how many days passed dividing the two floodings of the Nile. That’s when I realized they were very intellectual. Mathematics was really a big part of their lives.

             The pyramids made by the Egyptians were then showed. It was very amazing how from a simple concept of the Pythagorean Theorem, one of the Seven Wonders of the World emerged. They don’t even know the Pythagorean Theorem before. What they know is the 3-4-5 triangle.

             The Babylonian civilization was the next.  They had an inventive way of counting. They used their fingers on one hand and the knuckles on the other. This was their way of counting to be able to count 60 different numbers. I think Babylonians were pretty cool since they played board games during their leisure time. In their board games, mathematics was still used; this was an indication that Babylonians were in love with mathematics.

           I think the most important thing the Babylonians invented was the base-60 number system. This number system was used in telling time. There are 60 minutes in 1 hour and 60 seconds in one minute. I could not imagine using other bases in telling time.

            The last one featured was the Greeks. According to Marcus du Sautoy, they were the true founders of math. Unlike the other two civilizations mentioned above, the Greeks have generalized proofs of their inventions. Pythagoras was introduced as the one who constructed theorems on geometry. I finally understood the Pythagorean Theorem. I was dazed when I knew that music also had its foundations on mathematics. These days, music was a part of the arts. But mathematics still has something to do with it.

            To sum it all up, the movie was great. It serves as an eye opener for those people who could not understand the importance of mathematics. I met the people with brilliant minds who invented mathematics. They invented it not to make their younger members suffer in studying but to respond to their needs and to make life easier.

          In our day to day activities, we use mathematics. Starting when I look at the clock and realize that I was late until I count backwards to fall asleep. Mathematics has been a big part of our lives. I could not imagine life without mathematics.  Now, I won’t curse the people who invented math but I’ll thank them instead.

        I don’t think I’ll still agree with the quote above, because now, I understood the greatest invention of all time: MATH.