A Reviewer for Math History and Trivia [Not Updated]

1. Abacus- the abacus was invented around 1200 B.C. in China and was used in many ancient
civilizations, including Persia and Egypt.
Accounting- Italians of the Renaissance (14th through 16th century) are widely
acknowledged to be the fathers of modern accounting.
Algebra- The first treatise on algebra was written by Diophantus of Alexandria in the 3rd
century B.C. Algebra comes from the Arabic word al-jabr, an ancient medical term meaning
"the reunion of broken parts." Al-Khawarizmi is another early algebra scholar and was the
first to teach the formal discipline.
Archimedes- Archimedes was a mathematician and inventor from ancient Greece best
known for his discovery of the relationship between the surface and volume of a sphere and
its circumscribing cylinder for his formulation of a hydrostatic principle (Archimedes'
principle) and for inventing the Archimedes screw (a device for raising water).
Differential- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German philosopher,
mathematician and logician who is probably most well known for having invented
differential and integral calculus. He did this independently of Sir Isaac Newton.
Graph- graph is a pictorial representation of statistical data or of a functional relationship
between variables. William Playfair (1759-1823) is generally viewed as the inventor of most
graphical forms used to display data, including line plots, the bar chart, and the pie chart.
Math Symbol- In 1557, the "=" sign was first used by Robert Record. In 1631, came the ">"
sign.
Pythagoreanism- Pythagoreanism is a school of philosophy and a religious brotherhood
believed to have been founded by Pythagoras of Samos, who settled in Croton in southern
Italy about 525 B.C. The group had a profound effect on the development of mathematics.
Protractor- The simple protractor is an ancient device. As an instrument used to construct
and measure plane angles, the simple protractor looks like a semicircular disk marked with
degrees, beginning with 0º to 180º.
The first complex protractor was created for plotting the position of a boat on navigational
charts. Called a three-arm protractor or station pointer, it was invented in 1801 by Joseph
Huddart, a U.S. naval captain. The center arm is fixed, while the outer two are rotatable and
capable of being set at any angle relative to the center one.
Slide Rulers- Circular and rectangular slide rules, an instrument used for mathematical
calculations, were both invented by mathematician William Oughtred.
Zero- Zero was invented by the Hindu mathematicians Aryabhata and Varamihara in India
around or shortly after the year 520 A.D.
Egyptian Math History
Most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus (sometimes also called the
Ahmes Papyrus after its author), dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document
from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000–1800 BC.
Moscow papyrus, also from the Middle Kingdom period, dated to c. 1890 BC.[32]
It consists
of what are today called word problems or story problems, which were apparently intended
as entertainment. One problem is considered to be of particular importance because it gives
a method for finding the volume of a frustum (truncated pyramid).
Greek mathematics refers to the mathematics written in the Greek language from the time
of Thales of Miletus (~600 BC) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529
AD.[34]
Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean,
from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language. Greek mathematics of
the period following Alexander the Great is sometimes called Hellenistic mathematics.[35]
• thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC) and Pythagoras of
Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC)
• Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height
of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first
use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries
to Thales' Theorem.
• Pythagoras established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that
mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number".[38]
It was the
Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of
mathematics for its own sake begins.
• Nicomachus (60–120 AD) provided one of the earliest Greco-
Roman multiplication tables, whereas the oldest extant Greek multiplication table
is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD (now found in the British
Museum).
• The association of the Neopythagoreans with the Western invention of the
multiplication table is evident in its later Medieval name: the mensa Pythagorica
• Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) is important in the history of mathematics for
inspiring and guiding others.
o discussed the foundations of mathematics,[47]
clarified some of the
definitions (e.g. that of a line as "breadthless length"), and reorganized the
assumptions.[48]
o The analytic method is ascribed to Plato, while a formula for obtaining
Pythagorean triples bears his name.[46]

2. • Eudoxus (408–c. 355 BC) developed the method of exhaustion, a precursor of
modern integration[49]
and a theory of ratios that avoided the problem
of incommensurable magnitudes.[50]
Chinese Math History
• The Tsinghua Bamboo Slips, containing the world's earliest decimal multiplication
table, dated 305 BC during the Warring States period
• The date of the invention of the suan pan is not certain, but the earliest written
mention dates from AD 190, in Xu Yue's Supplementary Notes on the Art of
Figures.
212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than
officially sanctioned ones be burned.
• The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, one of the earliest surviving
mathematical texts from China (2nd century AD)
- consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business,
employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios
for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering, surveying, and includes material
on right triangles.
• Korean and Japanese mathematics were heavily influenced by the algebraic works
produced during China's Song dynasty, whereas Vietnamese mathematics was
heavily indebted to popular works of China's Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Arabic Math History
• the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the 4th and 5th centuries AD (Gupta
period) showing strong Hellenistic influence.[131]
o they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-
chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as
was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry.[132]
Through a series of translation
errors, the words "sine" and "cosine" derive from the Sanskrit "jiya" and
"kojiya".[132]
MATH TRIVIA
• The lemniscate is number 8 on its side. The word comes from the Latin word
lemniscatus meaning “ribbon”.
• Cipher comes from the Arabic word sifr meaning “empty”. The first known use of
the word zero was in 1598.
• Negative numbers were initially used to figure out the amount of someone’s debt. (
The Chinese used it first)
• Before the 16th century, mathematics was written out in words, making
mathematical discovery very difficult.
• The quantity being number theory, the structure being algebra, space being
geometry, and change being mathematical analysis. (Studies)
• The Fields Medal is made of gold and shows the head of Archimedes along with
a quotation attributed to him: (“Rise above oneself and grasp the world”)
(considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize)
• In Israel, the plus sign is missing the bottom stick, making it look like a small
inverted “T”.
• Prime numbers are mostly odd except for the number 2, which is used as factors for
almost every composite number.
• Letters were commonly used to represent numbers in ancient Rome.
I = 1; V = 5; X = 10; L = 50; C = 100; D = 500; M = 1000
• “FOR EVERY ONE HUNDRED” in latin is percent(%)
• A scalene triangle also has different measurements of each angle.
• Calculus is used in many different areas such as physics, astronomy, biology,
engineering, economics, medicine and sociology.
• 1/100th
of a second= jiffy
• Sides of an Enneadecagon is 19.
• Icosahedron has 20 sides
• The record for finding consecutive numbers, from 3.14 onward to the final digit, is
held by Fabrice Bellard, who announced that he had calculated pi to 2.7 trillion
digits.
• Ishango Bone and has Tally marks carved along it, was made around 30,000 BC
• Brahmagupta first used the number zero
• John Napier invented Logarithms 50 or Napier’s bones in 1614