A Concise History of Mathematics; Pages 50-100

Summary: The more I read, the more about the history of mathematics the book talks about. I keep learning new things, like how most of our knowledge of Egyptian mathematics derived from mathematical papyri. The book does not only mention the papyri that it talks about in great detail, but it shows images of them as well. Great civilizations like the Babylonians, Mayans, and Incas are mentioned for their great mathematical achievements. The Mayans constructed a well understood counting system, where numbers from one through four are represented as dots, and a five is a horizontal bar. So, if a Mayan wanted to represent a 9, they will draw four dots and one horizontal bar. The book also mentions how the Mayans had a different base number because they will use all their fingers and toes. As a result, instead of having a base of 10, they had a base of 20.

Quotation: “The best-known achievement of Hindu mathematics is our present decimal position” (Struik 67).

Reaction: The fact that Hindu mathematics provided us with the decimal system is very important. In fact, many of the mathematics that has been studied in the Eastern Hemisphere have great importance. The book mentions how many of the great thinkers like Pythagoras have come from the East, and how many of the ideas that we use in math have come from the East as well. Much of the great ideas we use today are credited to Egyptian, Chinese, Hindu, and Europeans mathematics.