Journal Response : Crest of the Peacock Introduction

 There were three things that I was surprised when reading this book. First thing was that place-value number system had invented by Babylonian and they knew how to solve quadratic equations and knew the Pythagorean theorem which is the relationship between the sides of a right angled triangle. I knew about the fact that Babylonian knew the Pythagorean theorem as I have done some online research for last class, however I did not know the fact that they also knew the method of solving quadratic equations. Quadratic equation is used a lot in our real life, it can be used to calculate the area of an enclosed space, profit and loss of the product or speed of an object. It was glad to know that Babylonian knew about solving the quadratic equation. 

Another thing that I was surprised was knowing about the root of Algebra which helps representation of the problem in the mathematical expressions. I have learned and studied algebra for few many years from Highschool, but I have not thought where it is came from and where it is rooted. I could know that Algebra was evolved from Egyptian roots to final form in the hands of Alexandrians. 

Last thing that I was surprised was about the book written by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. This book explains about main operations in solving equation which are reunion and reduction. For reunion, book talks about transferring negative terms to the other side of the equation, and for reduction it explains about combining like terms on the same side. I was surprised about the fact that there exist a book that talks about this method and people can learn this at that time. 

It was a good opportunity to know these facts as I didn't have chance to know about the origin and roots about the topics that I have studied. 


 

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanSeptember 21, 2022 at 11:40 AM

    Lisa, Thank you for sharing what you have learned from this chapter and how it compares to what you learned in your own experiences as a student. I agree that it is fascinating that the ancient Babylonians worked with quadratic equations and the Pythagorean theorem. We will study more about the work of al-Khwarizimi and the Islamic Golden Age. Good blog post!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics of Medieval Islam

  One of the interesting things I’ve found from this reading was about a person called Thābit.    Thābit was the person who lived from 836 to 901 and had a gift for languages. Translators were employed by wealthy families as well as by caliphs in that time. Thābit was a member of the sect of star worshippers whose religious beliefs were abhorrent to Muslims. His linguistic talents were discovered by Banū Mūsā. He also had mathematic talents that could make great results in science. Finally, he could earn a place of honor in the caliph’s retinue. By reading this book, I was really impressed onThābit’s various talents.     Another point that interested me was Al-Khwārizmī’s principal contributions. He contributed to the four areas of arithmetic, algebra, geography and astronomy. One of the books he contributed was ‘The Book of Addition and Subtraction According to the Hindu Calculation’ which introduced decimal positional system and made system convenient. Mo...
Read more

Group work Reflection

  I could learn a lot of things through this group work. Firstly, it was nice time to review some definitions of terminologies especially sagitta. Moreover, it was nice to know formulas for finding sagitta and chord that are needed when we want to find them in each circle. Our group had to derive those two formulas by modern way and an ancient way. By deriving in a modern way, I could understand well how formulas can be found by using Pythagorean theorem. By deriving in an ancient way, it was nice to know that it is possible to derive it by using an ancient way and we can still get the identical formula.     I could also learn about ancient Babylonian history of the segment of the circle. I was nice to know that they started to study the properties of a circle such as area of circle. Also, I learned that Babylonian believed that relation between diameter and circumference of circle was c=3d where c is circumference and d is a diameter. Moreover, they approximated the pi a...
Read more

Marshall Islander’s Charts for navigating

  By reading this article, I could learn how mathematical ideas were integrated in the view of maps and mapping. One of the interesting parts was that there are two types of Marshall Island stick charts. Meddo and rebbelith are the first type which show significant features of the environment. The second type is called mattang which is more abstract that models the dynamic geometry. Mattang was used in the training of navigators. It contained idealized shapes and forms that could explicate the principles of swell and land interaction.   I think embodied mathematics is significant in the history of mathematics as people could learn from their environment and their geometric aspects of the phenomena. In this article, the natural phenomena were oceanographic. The system was a conceptualization of the interplay of land, sea, and wind which led relative positions and directions to be important and the system could give arise to geometric implications.     One of the possi...
Read more