Falling in Love with Math: How did it become so complicated?

                “I love math, it just doesn’t love me back”- that’s what I usually say when I get low scores in math tests and other areas in relation to it. Then I blame the letters meddling with the numbers when I reached higher mathematics. What did I miss? It’s like I woke up one day and found letters all over my usual 1+1=2 equations. Apparently, this sequence of learning dates back to the Egyptians and progressed to the modern era from there. Before we get ahead of ourselves, how did it all start anyway?

               The movie “story of maths” revealed that like all other inventions, the mathematics originated from a need. The earliest form of math arose from the need to know when the River of Nile will flood next, calculated by the Egyptians. Moreover, the settlements grew larger and thus the need to administer taxes, calculate areas of land, predict cropules. It was these type of bureaucratic needs that made the Egyptians the first innovators of mathematics. Next came the Babylonians who charted their calendar based on the course of the night sky. This required them to calculate astronomically large numbers and thus zero needed to be represented. Their numerical system also suggested they needed to represent something without value which gave birth to what we now know as zero. One thing about Babylonians, they were astonishingly fond with mathematics as they used it even in their leisure. They developed board games, which I never could call ‘bored games’ since their mind had to be racing because winning the game required fast arithmetic and strategy. Later in time, the Greeks were very particular with philosophy. And so, they developed the deductive system to cater the need of proofs. This played a vital role in strengthening the foundations of mathematics because the discoveries before are as true today as they had been thousands of years ago. Perhaps one of the most famous mathematicians of all time is Pythagoras who, aside from the celebrated theorem, was also credited for the transformation of mathematics as a tool for counting to the analytic subject we have today. Now we've actually got somebody to blame! Oops. Kidding aside, what I have been blabbing about isn't the whole story. It’s just the beginning of a blissful journey which apparently is still going on.

                Inevitably, mathematics had to get harder than most can cope with, including yours truly. It has started with a need that had to be addressed, and we just don’t run out of needs. Or at least we know tricky ways to twist our wants into what sounds to be a need. Looking at the big picture, mathematics had been playing a big role in important innovations of today. Not a single invention of the modern world will be hold true if it’s not quantitatively true. Mathematics has provided us a method to prove our thoughts true and irrevocable. My words will never be able to describe its importance and there won’t be a list that will be long enough to enumerate its contributions to humanity. What we are able to grasp though, is that no matter how mathematics got so complex, we wouldn't have had it any other way..