Mathematics

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 661.

(retelling)

The word “mathematics” came from the Ancient Greek language and means “science, learning and knowledge”. As society developed, numbers became more and more important for business dealings and taxation and it became especially important to be able to record numbers. A wide variety of systems for recording numbers developed in different parts of the world. Since 17-th century all mathematicians began to use Arabic numerals and Greek alphabet. In fact, mathematics is considered to be one of only two genuinely international languages; the other one is music.

The argument in the scientific world over whether mathematics is a science or not appears to be unimportant, because we understand that it is impossible to separate mathematics from science and science from mathematics.

Mathematics study four major fields: quantity, structure, space and change. Quantity is mostly concerned with numbers – natural numbers and integers. The operations of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication combine these numbers together.

The study of the structure of things began with the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras. He showed us that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the side of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The Pythagoras' Theorem gave us algebra, a branch of mathematics.

Another Greek mathematician – Euclid – laid the foundations for our understanding of space. He used a small set of axioms to prove more theorems. We know it today as geometry. The scientist saw the world in three dimensions – height, width and length. Since Einstein, mathematicians have added a fourth dimension – time.

From algebra and geometry comes calculus. This tool was used to describe change, for example, in calculating the speed of a moving car or in analysing the changes of a city population over time.