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An essay on the history of mathematics
An essay on the history of mathematics
An essay on the history of mathematics
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The philosophy of Mathematics is defined as the branch of Mathematics concerned with the assumptions, foundations, implications of mathematics to be able to provide the details about its nature and its place in people’s live. The matters in which Philosophy of Mathematics so concerned varies depending on how mathematics so useful towards the advancement of people in every society. Here, we will look at how mathematical assumptions, foundations, and its place in the society of men changes over a period of time. In the first decades of the twentieth century, logicism, formalism and intuitionism emerged as philosophies of mathematics.
Logicism holds that Mathematics is logic. This means that logic is the foundation of mathematics and all mathematical statements are logical truths. Although the idea of logicism can be associated to Leibniz, it is Gottlob Frege who is considered the founder of Logicism since it was in his time when the principles of logic were revealed. He built a logistic program and devoted much of his time trying to show that mathematics can be reduced to logic. Un...
The history of mathematics has its roots on the African continent. The oldest mathematical object was found in Swaziland Africa. The oldest example of arithmetic was found in Zaire. The 4000 year old, Moscow papyrus, contains geometry, from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Egypt was the cradle of mathematics. The great Greek mathematicians, including Pythagoras, Thales, and Exodus all acquired much of their mathematics from Egypt, including the notion of zero. This paper will discuss a brief history of mathematics in Africa. Starting with the Lebombo bone and the Ishango Bone, I will then present Egyptian mathematics and end with a discourse on Muslim mathematics in African. “Most histories of mathematics devote only a few pages to Africa and Ancient Egypt... Generally they ignore the history of mathematics in Africa … and give the impression that this history either did not exist or, at least …is not knowable.”
Mathematics has become a very large part of society today. From the moment children learn the basic principles of math to the day those children become working members of society, everyone has used mathematics at one point in their life. The crucial time for learning mathematics is during the childhood years when the concepts and principles of mathematics can be processed more easily. However, this time in life is also when the point in a person’s life where information has to be broken down to the very basics, as children don’t have an advanced capacity to understand as adults do. Mathematics, an essential subject, must be taught in such a way that children can understand and remember.
Wigner, Eugene P. 1960. The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13: 1-14.
Mathematics is everywhere we look, so many things we encounter in our everyday lives have some form of mathematics involved. Mathematics the language of understanding the natural world (Tony Chan, 2009) and is useful to understand the world around us. The Oxford Dictionary defines mathematics as ‘the science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, whose methods, involve logical reasoning and use of symbolic notation, and which includes geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and analysis of mathematical operations or calculations (Soanes et al, Concise Oxford Dictionary,
The logic used to explain miracles of everyday life, thinking logically helps man to question the functioning of everything around us, the logic used to argue and is somehow a thought an idea that influences us for an action we do in our daily lives.
Knowledge, which is believed and justified as true, is usually supported by facts, believed to be true by the Ways of Knowing such as perception or reason. However, this claim may be limited by using the term “nothing more”, as knowledge may contain more than only organized facts. This essay will evaluate the claim in relation to Mathematics and History, involving Ways of Knowing such as reason and perception. As an IB student, studying is not only a process of memorizing knowledge provided, but also evaluating the process of generating knowledge of the subject studied. In relation to Mathematics, I will address that knowledge can be supported by concepts that cannot be perceived or are not necessarily a fact, and that the organization of facts can happen after the knowledge is generated. In contrast, I will look at how knowledge in History is difficult to be justified and therefore can be biased depending on who is organizing the facts.
As a secondary subject, society often views mathematics a critical subject for students to learn in order to be successful. Often times, mathematics serves as a gatekeeper for higher learning and certain specific careers. Since the times of Plato, “mathematics was virtually the first thing everyone has to learn…common to all arts, science, and forms of thought” (Stinson, 2004). Plato argued that all students should learn arithmetic; the advanced mathematics was reserved for those that would serve as the “philosopher guardians” of the city (Stinson, 2004). By the 1900s in the United States, mathematics found itself as a cornerstone of curriculum for students. National reports throughout the 20th Century solidified the importance of mathematics in the success of our nation and its students (Stinson, 2004). As a mathematics teacher, my role to educate all students in mathematics is an important one. My personal philosophy of mathematics education – including the optimal learning environment and best practices teaching strategies – motivates my teaching strategies in my personal classroom.
Each person needs to learn to respect, have integrity and be unique in their own way. One will learn that through struggle and a lot of effort to overcome different situations. I think that like me the world needs a balance where some need to be more than others, for example some people need to be kinder in contrast to cruelty to learn from each other to either be a better person or stay the same. This world needs people who are open to accept changes to change themselves and how they live, because for this world to be a more healthy and happy place we need to start changes within our own.
Burton, D. (2011). The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. (Seventh Ed.) New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Logic and mathematics starting with basic arithmetic showed me how to follow steps, one at a time and one after another, to arrive at the results, one step at a time and after another. I learned that an error in one step will make all the following steps and results wrong. Mathematics like any other rule and pattern based discipline may show through experience and trial or error, how to solve problems first by following given methods and later, if needed, by combining and exploring different methods.
Devlin believes that mathematics has four faces 1) Mathematics is a way to improve thinking as problem solving. 2) Mathematics is a way of knowing. 3) Mathematics is a way to improve creative medium. 4) Mathematics is applications. (Mann, 2005). Because mathematics has very important role in our life, teaching math in basic education is as important as any other subjects. Students should study math to help them how to solve problems and meet the practical needs such as collect, count, and process the data. Mathematics, moreover, is required students to be capable of following and understanding the future. It also helps students to be able to think creativity, logically, and critically (Happy & Listyani, 2011,
Mathematics is an inherent knowledge in the activities of life, where every activity is inseparable from mathematical activity (Presmeg, 2007; Nurhasanah, Kusumah, & Sabandar, 2017). Muhtadi, Sukirwan, Warsito and Prahmana (2017) recognise that mathematics is a form of culture integrated into all aspects of society, wherever we are there is mathematics. This study intends to investigate inherent mathematics in socio-cultural artefact “Oware” in Ghana. Many writers
This means that math work with numbers, symbols, geometric shapes, etc. One could say that nearly all human activities have some sort of relationship with mathematics. These links may be evident, as in the case of engineering, or be less noticeable, as in medicine or music. You can divide mathematics in different areas or fields of study. In this sense we can speak of arithmetic (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of structures), geometry (the study of the segments and figures) and statistics (data analysis collected), between
The Nature of Mathematics Mathematics relies on both logic and creativity, and it is pursued both for a variety of practical purposes and for its basic interest. The essence of mathematics lies in its beauty and its intellectual challenge. This essay is divided into three sections, which are patterns and relationships, mathematics, science and technology and mathematical inquiry. Firstly, Mathematics is the science of patterns and relationships. As a theoretical order, mathematics explores the possible relationships among abstractions without concern for whether those abstractions have counterparts in the real world.