Pacing Backwards

            In our day to day activities, from the time we wake up to start a new journey until we fell asleep to end a day, mathematics has always been a part of us. And I guess we can’t live without this so called subject. But have it ever crossed your mind how math was being developed and expounded through time by the masters of mathematics? Where mathematics has started? How it affects the lives of different civilizations in the world? And how fundamental it is to each and everyone?

           In a film I have watched, entitled “The Story of Maths- The Language of the Universe,” the host Marcus Du Sautoy gazes at how essential mathematics is to our lives before exploiting the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. But before anything else I propose to place subtitle in order for the viewers from different parts of the globe would really comprehend and internalize the things they would see.

          As we travel back the adventures of Marcus Du Sautoy to different places where math has evolved through time, the first top is the land of great pyramids, Egypt, where he begins in recording the patterns of the seasons and specifically the flooding of the Nile River that was fundamental to the economy of Egypt. Solving practical problems such as land area for taxation purposes was a need then. Du Sautoy reveals the use of decimal system based on fingers, Egyptians’ remarkable method of multiplication and division, and explores their understanding of binary numbers, fractions and solid shapes such as pyramid as he scrutinizes the Rhind Papyrus and Moscow Papyrus.

           We then continue our voyage to the former Mesopotamia where Du Sautoy finds out Babylonian base 60 number system that we utilize in our today’s time, such that there is 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. He then explains how the Babylonians used quadratic equations to measure their land and deals briefly with Plimpton 322, a clay tablet of the Babylonians used and known that contains an example of their mathematics.

              Last destination, the abode of earliest Greek mathematics, Greece, where Du Sautoy glances at the contributions of some of the supreme, finest and renowned mathematicians of all time including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras, the people behind the beginning of the transformation of mathematics from a gizmo for counting to the analytical subject matter we have recognized today. Pythagoras’ works on the properties of right triangles were also being shown and another important theory that was developed after observing musical instruments he then discovered that the intervals between harmonious musical notes are always in whole number intervals.

              The discoveries and development in mathematics was such a significant thing in today’s world even if most of the people would always hate this stuff but above all mathematics is a noteworthy to our lives because we use a bunch of what we were educated in our day by day routines. Upon seeing the film I realized mathematics is everywhere, it’s on your side, at the back or front or even it’s found above and underneath. I was mesmerized of what I have understood and learned from it. This so called subject is not merely a subject that we just knew for a very long time in our whole lives, rather this subject has created and made a great impact to each in every individual, for without mathematics the society we have lived today is not what how it looks like and we are experiencing in current times.