BY:

KHIDELSY BRIGGS- 11000 NATALIE LESSEY - 109005906 JANELLE MOHAMMED- 110005498

MALIKA OLIVER 11000

MAYA RAMKISSOON 110005422

The Origins of Mathematics.

Like every other aspect of human invention,

mathematics has its origin, and like every technology,

and mathematics is at least partly that, its origin is

based upon needs of mankind. The particular needs

are those arising from the wants of society. The more

complex the society, the more complex the needs.

100,000 BC to 8,000 BC {THE STONE AGE}

GREEKS AND EUROPEAN

EGYPT AND BABYLONIAN

EVIDENCE OF EARLY MATHEMATICS

MAYAN AND ISLAMIC

CHINA AND INDIA

100,000 BC to 25, 000 BC

Counting, measurement, calculations, geometric patterns the basic

mathematical needs of all societies Earliest records of counting emanate from incisions made on stones, sticks and bones. Blombos caves of South Africa paleolithic articfacts were discovered in 2002 and dated at around 100,000 to 70, 000 BC. The Lebombos bone of Swaziland, Africa 29 notches in a baboon fibula dated at 35,000 BC The Ishango Bones dated at 25,000 BC 3 rows of notches with one column containing 11, 13,17, and 19 notches. It is believed to be the origin of prime numbers. Neolithic people used tokens formed with fired clay (8000 BC)to measure products such as garments, oil and grain.

EGYPT:
Egypt is one of the worlds oldest

civilizations. The Ancient period was from about 3000300 BCE, during which this civilization had agriculture, writing, and a number system. Egypt subsisted on organized and centralized farming in the area flooded annually by the Nile.

EGYPT:
Tracking and managing the allocation of

land required extensive record-keeping, and written language.

The mathematics of Egypt, at least what is

known from the papyri, can essentially be called applied arithmetic.

EGYPT: Hieroglyphics
Hieroglyphics were used for permanent

messages. Some were carved inscriptions on monuments and buildings. Others were painted on the inside walls of buildings and tombs

EGYPT: Hieroglyphs

EGYPT: Counting and Arithmetic

The Egyptian counting system was decimal.

A system of writing numbers emerged from

hieroglyphics. A number was written as a picture of its components. The base of the system was 10, like ours, but the notation was completely different.

EGYPT: Counting and Arithmetic

Each power of 10 had a separate symbol.
The order in which the symbols of a number

was written was not important; i.e. no place value.

EGYPT: Fractions
All fractions represented a single part of a larger

whole, e.g. 1/3 and 1/5, as above. (There was an exception made for 2/3.) The symbol for a fraction was to place an open mouth above the denominator.

EGPYT: Numbers
Numbers and addition are formed by grouping.

Multiplication is basically binary.

Example: Multiply: 47 24

Process: Selecting 8 and 16

doubling process: 47 1 94 2 188 4 376 8* 752 16 *

(i.e. 8 + 16 = 24), we have, 24 = 16 + 8 47 24 = 47 (16 + 8) = 752 + 376 = 1128

EGYPT: Division Division is also basically binary. Example: Divide: 329 12

Example:

329 12 12 1 24 2 48 4 96 8 192 16 384 32

doubling 329 -192 137 -96 41 -24 17 -12 5

Now 329 = 16 12 + 8 12 + 2 12 + 1 12 + 5 = (16 + 8 + 2 + 1) 12 + 5 So, 329 12 = 27 5/12 = 27+ 1/3 + 1/12

EGYPT
Obviously, the distributive laws for

multiplication and division were well understood.

EGYPT: Practical use of the arithmetic system

The main problems that a scribe would

have to solve were such things as determining the area of a plot of land assigned to a farmer a multiplication problem. Or dividing up some commodity into equal portions a division problem.

EGYPT: Algebra
The Egyptian algebraic problems did not

concern specific concrete objects, such as beer and bread, nor do they call for operations on known numbers. Instead they require the equivalent of solutions of linear equations of the form : x + ax = b or ax + bx = c, where a and b and c and x is unknown.

EGYPT: Geometry
The obliteration of the boundaries in the overflow of the Nile emphasised the need for surveyors.
Credit was given to these surveyors for the accuracy of the construction of the pyramids. It often is said that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with Pythagoras Theorem, but there is no hint of this in the papyri that have come down to us.

EGYPT: Geometry
The Egypt rule for finding the area of a circle has long

been regarded as one of the outstanding achievements of the time. ( was given a vale of 3 1/6 ) No theorem or formal proof is known in Egyptian mathematics, but some of the geometric comparisons made in the Nile Valley, such as those on the perimeters and areas of circles and squares, are among the first exact statements in history concerning curvilinear figures.

EGYPT: Trigonometric Ratio

In the construction of the pyramids it had

been essential to maintain a uniform slope for the faces, and it may have been this concern that the Egyptians to introduce a concept equivalent to the cotangent of an angle.

BABYLONIA - MESOPOTAMIA
Babylonia (Babylonian Bbili,"gate of God"; Old

Persian Babirush),was the ancient country of Mesopotamia, known originally as Sumer and later as Sumer and Akkad, lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, south of modern Baghdd, Iraq. Not much is known about their mathematics. Of the little that is known, the Sumerians of the Mesopotamian valley built homes and temples and decorated them with artistic pottery and mosaics in geometric patterns. The Babylonians used the cuneiform (wedge shaped) system of writing on clay tablets with reed styluses.

Scribes created the wedge shapes which made cuneiform signs by pressing the stylus into a clay or wax surface.

Mespotamian Numbers
In mathematics, the Babylonians (Sumerians) were

somewhat more advanced than the Egyptians. A unique number system was used based on the number 60, not on the familiar base 10 used in most other cultures. The Babylonians developed this system for writing down numbers, using symbols for singles, tens, and hundreds, showing that they probably used a decimal system for everyday life. This system allowed them to handle large numbers comfortably and perform all of the major arithmetical functions. However, there is no evidence that they used a number for zero, and they did not use fractions.

Babylonia counting system

As a result of the Babylonian 60 system of counting, we

still divide a circle into 360 degrees and count hours, minutes, and seconds. This sexagesimal system was used for weights and measures, astronomy, and for the development of mathematical functions; today, it is still being used to measure angles in degrees, minutes and seconds.

Place Value, but No Place Holder

In the Babylonian system, numbers that are 60 times larger

or 60 times smaller were all written the same way.

QUADRATIC EQUATIONS
The idea of square numbers and quadratic equations

(where the unknown quantity is multiplied by itself, e.g. x2) naturally arose in the context of the measurement of land, and Babylonian mathematical tablets give us the first ever evidence of the solution of quadratic equations.
The Babylonian approach to solving them usually

revolved around a kind of geometric game of slicing up and rearranging shapes.

Babylonia- Geometry
The Babylonians used geometric shapes in their

buildings and design and in dice for the leisure games which were so popular in their society, such as the ancient game of backgammon. Their geometry extended to the calculation of the areas of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids, as well as the volumes of simple shapes such as bricks and cylinders (although not pyramids).

The PLIMPTON CLAY TABLET

The famous Plimpton 322 clay tablet, believed to date

from around 1800 BC, suggests that the Babylonians may well have known the secret of right-angled triangles (that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the other two sides) many centuries before the Greek Pythagoras. The tablet appears to list 15 perfect Pythagorean triangles with whole number sides, although some claim that they were merely academic exercises, and not deliberate manifestations of Pythagorean triples.

The Mayans
Settled in the region of Central America from 2000BC

Required mathematics for astronomy and calendar

calculations Used a vigesimal number system based on base twenty (20) (and, to some extent, base five (5)). The numerals consisted of only three symbols: zero, represented by a shell shape; one, a dot; and five, a bar. Addition and subtraction was simply the adding up of dots and bars.

The Mayans
After the number 19, larger numbers were written in a

kind of vertical place value format using powers of 20: 1, 20, 400, 8000, 160000, etc

The Mayans
Despite not possessing the concept of a fraction, and

using no instruments other than sticks, the were able to accurately calculate: The length of a solar year to be 365.242 days The length of a lunar month to be 29.5308 days Due to the geographical disconnect Mayan

mathematics had no influence on European and Asian numbering systems and mathematics

Islamic Mathematics
The Islamic Empire established across Persia, the

Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia and parts of India in the 8th century onwards made significant contributions towards mathematics. They fused together the mathematical developments from both Greece and India. The used complex geometric patterns to decorate buildings and discovered all the different forms of symmetry that can be depicted on a 2-dimensional surface.

Islamic Mathematicians
Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi contributions include: Advocacy of the Hindu numerical system (1 -9 and 0) Algebraic methods of reduction and balancing. Solving polynomial equations up to the second degree. Muhammad Al-Karaji introduced The theory of algebraic calculus. Method of proof by mathematical induction.

The Greeks
The Greeks adopted elements of mathematics from

both the Babylonians and the Egyptians The ancient Greek numeral system was known as Attic or Herodianic numerals. It was a base ten system, with symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000 repeated as many times needed to represent the desired number.

The Greeks
Thales, one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece, who

lived on the Ionian coast of Asian Minor in the first half of the 6th Century BC, established what has become known as Thales' Theorem, whereby if a triangle is drawn within a circle with the long side as a diameter of the circle, then the opposite angle will always be a right angle (as well as some other related properties derived from this).

Pythagoras
The legend of the 6th Century BC mathematician

Pythagoras of Samos has become synonymous with the birth of Greek mathematics. Indeed, he is believed to have coined both the words "philosophy" ("love of wisdom") and "mathematics" ("that which is learned"). Pythagoras was perhaps the first to realize that a complete system of mathematics could be constructed, where geometric elements corresponded with numbers. Pythagoras Theorem (or the Pythagorean Theorem) is one of the best known of all mathematical theorems.

Euclids Element
In the 3rd century BC, the premier center of

mathematical education and research was the Musaeum of Alexandria. It was there that Euclid(c. 300 BC) taught, and wrote the Elements, widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time. The Elements introduced mathematical rigor through the axiomatic method and is the earliest example of the format still used in mathematics today, that of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof. Euclid arranged them into a single, coherent logical framework.

Rise of mathematics came with the deterioration of

developments in Greece Chinese used an abacus (2nd millennium BC) a system of small bamboo rods arranged to represent the numbers 1 to 9, which were then places in columns representing units, tens, hundreds, thousands. Written form of mathematics was more complicated as there was no symbol or concept of zero. The Lo Shu square was later developed and this led to the development of other boards that gave rise to the Pascals Triangle and other mathematical concepts such as the chinese remainder theorem .

The Abacus earliest counting method

The Lo Shu Square How the Chinese would solve a problem

The Chinese and Indians

By 1000 BC, powers of 10 were discovered in India There was also evidence of the use of arithmetic operations such as

addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, squares, cubes and roots Jain mathematicians postulated the existence of 5 different infinities. By 8th century BC the Indians had discovered a very accurate way to calculate the square root of 2 by adding 1 + 13 + 1(3 x 4) + 1(3 x 4 x 34 Concepts of zero are believed to have emerged from Brahmagupta. Other areas that were delved into include trigonometry and quadratics / algebra.

Hindu Arabic Numerals

http://www.storyofmathematics.com

http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/masters/origins/content1.

htm http://www.freemathhelp.com/origins-math.html http://www.scribd.com/doc/38014710/The-Origins-ofMathematics http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/masters/origins/origins.p df http://www.math.ou.edu/~mleite/MATH3413_sp11pdf/ODE_H istory.pdf