A New Light to Math

            Some refer to it as a pain or a walk-in-the-park. That dreaded subject that every student has a problem with when faced with mountains upon mountains of problem sets and assignments that deals with so many numbers that one cannot comprehend. That subject that gives some of them headaches when trying to comprehend it and I am talking about math.

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            We watched “The Story of Mathematics”. The documentary talked about the history about math on how it came to be the math we know. Math nowadays is something of a common topic when it comes to the education system anywhere in the world but in earlier times math was used to solve problems of the economy like in ancient Egypt. During those times the pharaoh needed to tax his subjects accordingly or when the tide of the Nile River would rise and submerge the farmlands. Then the Babylonians came with a number system that was base 60 and arithmetic. Yet stated in the documentary, the Babylonians had a habit of playing board games so they did but they also added math to the mechanics of the game. The third civilization talked about was the Greeks. The Greek were the ones who gave us Pythagoras who in turn gave the study of geometry most known theorem which is c²=a²+b².

            Math in the present time is a part of daily life for both students and professionals alike. As what was previously stated, math during ancient times was a means to justify values that numbers could only answer like taxes or for justifying measurements. Comparing the math of the past and the present, it has evolved to a more complex topic from simple means of counting to advance calculations that can and could answer the questions of the world.