bury me in this dress

It’s time once again to pimp le blog. Without further ado…

Who Invented Mathematics?
Mathematics is the science that deals with numbers, quantity, and form. Without a knowledge of mathematics, our whole modern way of life would be impossible!

For example, we would have no good houses, because men who build houses know how to measure and count and figure. Our clothing would be very crude, because figuring is necessary to cut cloth correctly. There would be no railroads, steamships, or airplanes, nor any great industries, nor any commerce as we know it.

And, of course, there would be no radio, television, movies, telephones, or thousands of other things that are part of our civilization. The use of mathematics to measure how many, how much, or how long, is a vital part of creation of the world we live in.

Life was much more simple for our primitive ancestors, but even they had to use the idea of numbers. Earliest man wanted to keep a record of the things he possessed. - How many tools did he have, how many weapons, how many animals? As soon as he wanted to express such ideas as one, two, many, and so on, he began to use mathematics.

In fact, counting was the beginning of mathematics. And the art of counting took a long, long time to develop. At first, it was done by scratching tally marks on a wall or painting them on papyrus, a form of paper. Early man could tell how many by looking at the tally marks, even if he didn’t have the words for it.

Gradually, the ancient Egyptians and then the Greeks and Romans developed better number systems.

But counting, of course, is only one part of mathematics. The idea of form and how to measure it is very important to man too. Primitive man used the idea of form in his everyday life, even though he didn’t know how to measure form exactly. For intance, in making his primitive dwellings, he used rectangles and circles.

This was a simple, practical application of mathematics. But mathematics also is used in drawing logical conclusions from given facts, even if you’re not dealing with material objects. For example, in geometry, we put everything down on paper and figure out the answers to problems. Then we put our conclusions to use in everyday life.

Source: More Tell Me Why by Arkady Leokum

That was boring! I used to want to shoot the person who invented math but after painstakenly typing this, I want to shoot that Arkady Leokum. But seriously, I have little brain for math. I have a hard time adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing and these are the base application of math. Imagine me and a friend in a restaurant. It is time for us to pay for what we ate so we look glumly at the bill. When I see those numbers, I get shellshocked. Not because of the price but my brain goes into overload trying to figure out how much I have to pay for my share. If my friend (Hi Louie!) is like me who only took Math 1 in college, she will whip out her cellphone and use the built-in calculator application. But say if I was with my cousin Fortune, I wouldn’t even bother to look at the bill because I just assume he’ll pay for it. If I was dining with Phoebe, I won’t assume she’ll foot the bill because I’m sure she won’t. I will look at the bill, pretend I’m computing, give a figure which is miles away from the bull’s eye more often than not. Thankfully she’s good at math so I’ll look at her quizically after saying a figure and then she corrects me. Friends are good for the soul and for math.

Again, Arkady Leokum didn’t answer the question he posed. He just gave a very vague history as to when humans started using it but I have a feeling he didn’t research on that well. Still, I love his stupid book which my mom bought from Book Sale I think and this was lightyears ago. Starting today, I will do as them cavemen do and keep a tally on my cave dwelling (my dirty room) everytime Arkady Leokum fails to answer his own questions.

Please do some math now. Figure out how much extra money you have, deduct some $$$ then add them to

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 5:10 am and is filed under Totally Useless Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.