Story of Maths: Genius of the East

We’ve all learned about the mathematics of Egypt, Babylonia and Greece but all of that is from the East. What about the West? Did they not contribute anything to mathematics? I don’t think so. If so, what is there contribution to mathematics?

Genius of the East is the next installment of BBC’s The Story of Maths. Were Professor Marcus du Sautoy takes you to the East. Where the ancient land of China, India, Middle East resides. He also takes you to Italy where the contributions of the East first became known to the West.

Now let’s visit the world of Ancient China, where mathematics played a major role especially to the administration of the Chinese Empire. Emperor Yu believes that numbers held cosmic significance and that is why Astronomers are prized members of the Imperial Court. They also have a way to make sure that the Emperor would have the most favourable successor and this lead the way to geometric progression. Chinese are also known because they discovered a way to solve equations. The formulation of the Remainder Theorem also became the Golden Age of Chinese Mathematics.

While India has the greatest innovation of all times in mathematics because of the Indian system of counting. Indians also introduced zero (0) to the world. Their representation of zero is because of cultural and religious reason. Trigonometry was also formulated by the Indians where they use it to calculate distances when people cannot make accurate measurements and is also essential in observatories.

The House of Wisdom is a library known in the Middle East because of its contribution to Astronomy, Chemistry and Zoology. Persian scholar, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi introduced the Hindu-Arabic Numerals which we now use and is also the Father of Rhetorical Algebra.

Italy is where Eastern knowledge of Math first circulated in the West.  One of their most prized contribution to Mathematics is the Fibonacci sequence named after Leonardo of Pisa or better known as Fibonacci.

The whole documentary tells us that mathematics did not just evolve in the West but also in the East. In fact some of the basic mathematical symbols that we use today originated from Eastern countries. Therefore, I can conclude that no matter where you are in the world or what race you are Mathematics would always be with you.

Let’s end this blog by playing China’s early version of Sudoku or what they call “The Magic Square”.

These are the rules:

Use the numbers 1-9 only to fill the boxes. These numbers could not be repeated.

Make sure that when you add the numbers in the boxes it would result to a sum of 15. (Addition of numbers: Horizontally, Vertically and Diagonally).

BY: DAISIC DE ASIS BELLO