Story of Math

     The story of math was mainly about its history. The movie series was made by Marcus Du Sautoy from the University of Oxford. It was co-producted between the Open University and the BBC. Marcus Du Sautoy started his journey by looking back the mathematics of the Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. He took the viewers iside the lives of many mathematician.

   The first country that he visited was the Egypt. He discovered that they were concerned about the patterns of the season and in particular the flodding of the Nile River in which they used as marker and particular problem for the taxation of the land. Du Sautoy discovers cubits, notations, and fractions of the Egyptian. Ancient Egyptian doesnt had place value system but they had decimal system based on the fingers of their hands. They were the first to get the approximation value of Pi and the 3-4-5 triangle. They encountered shapes in which they used smaller shape to capture larger one.

     After travelling Egypt. He then gone to Mesopotamia or the Babylonian. Du Sautoy discovered that the Babylonian was fascinated by the moon. The time wew were usinf now was based on the Babylonian 60 based number system. Because of Babylonian, we had 60 seconds in one minute, 60 minute in one hour and so on. They recorded the cycle of the days until they get the full cycle of the days in one year.

   After Mesopotamia, he then proceeded to Greece. Greeks main contribution was theorems and proofs. Greek mathematicians including Phythagoras, Euclid, Plato, and Archimedes were some of the people who had graet contribution of the beginning transformation from counting to the complex problems we know nowadays. Phythagoras, who were fascinated by music, was a teacher and his teachings were considered as strange by his followers. Hipassus, one of his follower, announced the discovery of irrational numbers. Phythagoras observed musical instruments. He then discovered that between musical notes, there is an interval and it was always in a whole number form. He also discovered the properties of right triangles. Follower of Phythagoras, formulated the Phythagorean Theorem in honor of him.

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    The concept in mathematics that we used today, were the combined discoveries of the three country which are the Egypt, Mesopotamia or Babylon and Greece. These three civilizations had a great contribution in the history of mathematics. Because of mathematics, we can solved complicated problems. From time to time, their knowledge about math widen. These three civilizations had its own representation of numbers, symbols and measurements. Their work from day to day became easier.

    The movie help me to gain appreciation of mathematics because as what I saw in the documentation, their way of solving problems was unique. From the discoveries of shapes, symbols and many more, the new and complex numbers emerged. I can say that people from the past were the reason why we had infinite numbers and yet we were still using it today.