Monday 19 March 2012

Math Quizzes

Hi! 
Let's say you're filling in your spare time on the net, but you feel guilty for not studying. 
Well, worry not! Cause the internet is full of websites you can go to for educational purposes. If you want something that can test your brain, here are a few websites of Maths Quizzes. They're pretty fun and also beneficial for you! So take a few minutes off Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr as well as 9GAG and have a go at these links! ;)



Aliah Zaini

Sunday 18 March 2012

Archimides Archimedes & Phythagoras of Samos Pythagoras


Archimedes Archimedes is universally acknowledged to be the greatest of ancient mathematicians. He studied at Euclid's school, but his work was far superior than the works of Euclid. Archimedes made advances in number theory, algebra, and analysis, but is most renowned for his many theorems of plane and solid geometry. He was first to prove Heron's formula for the area of a triangle. He found a method to trisect an arbitrary angle. Although it doesn't survive in his writings, Pappus reports that he discovered the Archimedean solids. One of his most remarkable and famous geometric results was determining the area of a parabolic section, for which he offered two independent proofs, one using his Principle of the Lever, the other using a geometric series. 

Archimedes’s methods anticipated both the integral and differential calculus. He was similar to Newton in that he used his (non-rigorous) calculus to discover results, but then devised rigorous geometric proofs for publication. His original achievements in physics include the principles of leverage, the first law of hydrostatics, and inventions like the compound pulley, the hydraulic screw, and war machines. His books include Floating Bodies, Spirals, The Sand Reckoner, Measurement of the Circle, and Sphere and Cylinder. 

Archimedes proved that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a cylinder. He requested that a representation of such a sphere and cylinder be inscribed on his tomb. Archimedes discovered formulae for the volume and surface area of a sphere, and may even have been first to notice and prove the simple relationship between a circle’s circumference and area. For these reasons, π is often called Archimedes’ constant. 

 By Pui Ling :) 



Pythagoras Of Samos Pythagoras, who is sometimes called the "First Philosopher," studied under Anaximander, Egyptians, Babylonians, and the mystic Pherekydes (from whom Pythagoras acquired a belief in reincarnation); he became the most influential of early Greek mathematicians. He is credited with being first to use axioms and deductive proofs, so his influence on Plato and Euclid may be enormous. He and his students (the "Pythagoreans") were ascetic mystics for whom mathematics was partly a spiritual tool. (Some occultists treat Pythagoras as a wizard and founding mystic philosopher.)

Pythagoras was very interested in astronomy and recognized that the Earth was a globe similar to the other planets. He believed thinking was located in the brain rather than heart. The words "philosophy" and "mathematics" are said to have been coined by Pythagoras. Despite Pythagoras' historical importance I may have ranked him too high: many results of the Pythagoreans were due to his students; none of their writings survive; and what is known is reported second-hand, and possibly exaggerated, by Plato and others. His students included Hippasus of Metapontum, perhaps the famous physician Alcmaeon, Milo of Croton, and Croton's daughter Theano (who may have been Pythagoras's wife). The term "Pythagorean" was also adopted by many disciples who lived later; these disciples include Philolaus of Croton, the natural philosopher Empedocles, and several other famous Greeks.

Pythagoras' successor was apparently Theano herself: the Pythagoreans were one of the few ancient schools to practice gender equality. Pythagoras discovered that harmonious intervals in music are based on simple rational numbers. This led to a fascination with integers and mystic numerology; he is sometimes called the "Father of Numbers" and once said "Number rules the universe." (About the mathematical basis of music, Leibniz later wrote, "Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting." Other mathematicians who investigated the arithmetic of music included Huygens, Euler and Simon Stevin.) The Pythagorean Theorem was known long before Pythagoras, but he is often credited with the first proof. (Apastambha proved it in India at about the same time, and some theorize that Pythagoras journeyed to India and learned of the proof there.)

He also discovered the simple parametric form of Pythagorean triplets (xx-yy, 2xy, xx+yy). Other discoveries of the Pythagorean school include the concepts of perfect and amicable numbers, polygonal numbers, golden ratio (attributed to Theano), the five regular solids (attributed to Pythagoras himself), and irrational numbers (attributed to Hippasus). It is said that the discovery of irrational numbers upset the Pythagoreans so much they tossed Hippasus into the ocean! (Another version has Hippasus banished for revealing the secret for constructing the sphere which circumscribes a dodecahedron.)

 By Xi En :)

Thursday 15 March 2012

History of modern mathematics

HISTORY OF MODERN MATHEMATICS

One of the more colorful figures in 20th century mathematics was Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (1887–1920), an Indian autodidact who conjectured or proved over 3000 theorems, including properties of highly composite numbers, the partition function and its asymptotics, and mock theta functions. He also made major investigations in the areas of gamma functions, modular forms, divergent series, hypergeometric series and prime number theory.

Paul Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. Mathematicians have a game equivalent to the Kevin Bacon Game, which leads to the Erdős number of a mathematician. This describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and Paul Erdős, as measured by joint authorship of mathematical papers.

As in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific age has led to specialization: by the end of the century there were hundreds of specialized areas in mathematics and the Mathematics Subject Classification was dozens of pages long.[131] More and more mathematical journals were published and, by the end of the century, the development of the world wide web led to online publishing.
[edit] 21st century

In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the seven Millennium Prize Problems, and in 2003 the Poincaré conjecture was solved by Grigori Perelman (who declined to accept any awards).

Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched. There is an increasing drive towards open access publishing, first popularized by the arXiv.
[edit] Future of mathematics
Main article: Future of mathematics

There are many observable trends in mathematics, the most notable being that the subject is growing ever larger, computers are ever more important and powerful, the application of mathematics to bioinformatics is rapidly expanding, the volume of data to be analyzed being produced by science and industry, facilitated by computers, is explosively expandin




BY; farah wahidah anuar
                                                  Prehistoric mathematics

The origins of mathematical thought lie in the concepts of number, magnitude, and form.[11] Modern studies of animal cognition have shown that these concepts are not unique to humans. Such concepts would have been part of everyday life in hunter-gatherer societies. The idea of the "number" concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between "one", "two", and "many", but not of numbers larger than two.[11]

The oldest known possibly mathematical object is the Lebombo bone, discovered in the Lebombo mountains of Swaziland and dated to approximately 35,000 BC.[12] It consists of 29 distinct notches cut into a baboon's fibula.[13] Also prehistoric artifacts discovered in Africa and France, dated between 35,000 and 20,000 years old,[14] suggest early attempts to quantify time.[15]

The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be as much as 20,000 years old and consists of a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone. Common interpretations are that the Ishango bone shows either the earliest known demonstration of sequences of prime numbers[13] or a six month lunar calendar.[16] In the book How Mathematics Happened: The First 50,000 Years, Peter Rudman argues that the development of the concept of prime numbers could only have come about after the concept of division, which he dates to after 10,000 BC, with prime numbers probably not being understood until about 500 BC. He also writes that "no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10."[17]

Predynastic Egyptians of the 5th millennium BC pictorially represented geometric designs. It has been claimed that megalithic monuments in England and Scotland, dating from the 3rd millennium BC, incorporate geometric ideas such as circles, ellipses, and Pythagorean triples in their design.[18]

All of the above are disputed however, and the currently oldest undisputed mathematical usage is in Babylonian and dynastic Egyptian sources. Thus it took human beings at least 45,000 years from the attainment of behavioral modernity and language (generally thought to be a long time before that) to develop mathematics as such.
[edit] Babylonian mathematics
Main article: Babylonian mathematics
See also: Plimpton 322
The Babylonian mathematical tablet Plimpton 322, dated to 1800 BC.

Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the people of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the days of the early Sumerians through the Hellenistic period almost to the dawn of Christianity.[19] It is named Babylonian mathematics due to the central role of Babylon as a place of study. Later under the Arab Empire, Mesopotamia, especially Baghdad, once again became an important center of study for Islamic mathematics



                                                             by: vanitha perumal

Tuesday 13 March 2012

History of Mathematics, Part II

Babylonian Mathematics
Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the people of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the days of the early Sumerians through the Hellenistic period almost to the dawn of Christianity. It is named Babylonian mathematics due to the central role of Babylon as a place of study. Later under the Arab Empire, Mesopotamia, especially Baghdad, once again became an important center of study for Islamic mathematics. 


Egyptian Mathematics
Egyptian mathematics refers to mathematics written in the Egyptian language. From the Hellenistic periodGreek replaced Egyptian as the written language of Egyptian scholars. Mathematical study in Egypt later continued under the Arab Empire as part of Islamic mathematics, when Arabic became the written language of Egyptian scholars. 


Greek Mathematics

Greek mathematics refers to the mathematics written in the Greek language from the time of Thales of Miletus (~600 BC) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529 AD. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language. Greek mathematics of the period following Alexander the Great is sometimes called Hellenistic mathematics.
Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures. All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.

Chinese Mathematics
Early Chinese mathematics is so different from that of other parts of the world that it is reasonable to assume independent development. The oldest extant mathematical text from China is the Chou Pei Suan Ching, variously dated to between 1200 BC and 100 BC, though a date of about 300 BC appears reasonable 

Islamic Mathematics
The Islamic Empire established across Persia, the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia, and in parts of India in the 8th century made significant contributions towards mathematics. Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, most of them were not written by Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time.Persians contributed to the world of Mathematics alongside Arabs. 

Indian Mathematics
Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BC until the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400 AD to 1200 AD), important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara II. The decimal number system in use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics. Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number, negative numbers, arithmetic, and algebra. In addition, trigonometry was further advanced in India, and, in particular, the modern definitions of sine and cosine were developed there. These mathematical concepts were transmitted to the Middle East, China, and Europe and led to further developments that now form the foundations of many areas of mathematics. 

Nadiah Roslan