mathematician

Bhāskara II 

Bhaskara the teacher, Bhaskara Achārya, Bhaskara II, Bhāskarācārya

FAMOUS AS

Mathematician

NATIONALITY

Indian    Famous Indian Men

RELIGION

Hinduism

BORN

1114 AD

DIED AT AGE

71

BORN IN

Bijapur

DIED ON

1185 AD

 Bhāskara II’s mathematical works (written in verse like nearly all Indian mathematical classics), particularly Līlāvatī (“The Beautiful”) and Bījagaṇita (“Seed Counting”), he not only used the decimal system but also compiled problems from Brahmagupta and others. He filled many of the gaps in Brahmagupta’s work, especially in obtaining a general solution to the Pell equation (x2 = 1 + py2) and in giving many particular solutions (e.g., x2 = 1 + 61y2, which has the solution x = 1,766,319,049 and y = 226,153,980; French mathematician Pierre de Fermat proposed this same problem as a challenge to his friend Frenicle de Bessy five centuries later in 1657). Bhāskara II anticipated the modern convention of signs (minus by minus makes plus, minus by plus makes minus) and evidently was the first to gain some understanding of the meaning of division by zero, for he specifically stated that the value of 3/0 is an infinite quantity, though his understanding seems to have been limited, for he also stated wrongly that a⁄0 × 0 = a. Bhāskara II used letters to represent unknown quantities, much as in modern algebra, and solved indeterminate equations of 1st and 2nd degrees. He reduced quadratic equations to a single type and solved them and investigated regular polygons up to those having 384 sides, thus obtaining a good approximate value of π = 3.141666.

What Is Math?

                            By Wendy Petti

What is math? It might seem obvious: We hope we know what we're teaching -- and that our students know what they're learning! But responses to that question can be surprisingly diverse.

Before you read on, please take a few minutes to reflect and record your own thoughts on "What is math?"

Illustration courtesy of Wendy Petti.

I'm a math educator -- I teach grade 4 math, I've created a math Web site, and I write about topics in math education. Yet I cannot easily express what math is. I'm in good company. Bertrand Russell has quipped, "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." Math teacher Sanderson M. Smith observes that "students can gain a tremendous appreciation for mathematics if they understand that the question 'What is mathematics?' has been analyzed and debated since the time of the Pythagoreans, around 550 B.C. "

It is worth pursuing a clear understanding of the meaning and scope of mathematics so that we might provide our students with a richer learning experience and help them more fully appreciate the beauty and power of mathematics.

STUDENTS AND TEACHERS REFLECT ON
"WHAT IS MATH?"

In my math classes, no matter how much attention we pay to the five content standards and five process standards, many of my students seem to focus on number and operation when they share their thoughts and feelings about math. One of my students had an "aha!" moment the morning after a student-led math night: "I look at math a different way now. I've usually thought of math as something we need to do, to know how much money we need to pay, things like that. But this morning I woke up and said, 'Wow! Math is everywhere!'"

A 2005 Math Cats writing contest on "What is math?" produced these reflections:

• From an elementary school volunteer: "Math is more than a subject we learn in school. Math is every breath we take and every second of the day. From the moment we wake up in the morning, math is the core of everything we do..."
• From a first-grade teacher:
  "Math is you.
  Math is me.
  Math is everything we see!
  Infinity and beyond our wildest dreams
  Math encompasses all extremes!"
• From a 13-year-old: "Math is the entire world simplified on a piece of paper... Math is ingeniousness morphed into a tiny simple formula so we can harness its fantastic powers."
• From a 12-year-old: "Math is the universal language of the world."
• From an 11-year-old: "No one can live without math; it means different things to different people. But to me it means love, liberty, learning. I could keep going but to sum it up, math is my life."

mathematical facts

                       Top ten facts about maths

1. In 2010 on World Maths Day, 1.13 million students from more than 235 countries set a record correctly answering 479,732,613 questions. 

2. Americans called mathematics ‘math’, arguing that ‘mathematics’ functions as a singular noun so ‘math’ should be singular too. 

3. They have been calling maths ‘math’ for much longer than we have called it ‘maths’. 

4. ‘Mathematics’ is an anagram of ‘me asthmatic’. 

5. The only number in English that is spelled with its letters in alphabetical order is ‘forty’. 

6. The only Shakespeare play to include the word ‘mathematics’ is The Taming Of The Shrew. 

7. Notches on animal bones show that people have been doing mathematics, or at least making computations, since around 30,000BC. 

8. The word ‘hundrath’ in Old Norse, from which our ‘hundred’ derives, meant not 100 but 120. 

9. “Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” (Albert Einstein). 

10. “Mathematics [is] the subject in which we never know what we are talking about nor whether what we are saying is true.” (Bertrand Russell).

maths in games

             Everything in the Universe Is Made of Math

interesting facts about maths

Did you know that...

1. π=3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679 82148 08651 32823 ...
2. A sphere has two sides. However, there are one-sided surfaces.
3. There are shapes of constant width other than the circle. One can even drill square holes.
4. There are just five regular polyhedra
5. In a group of 23 people, at least two have the same birthday with the probability greater than 1/2
6. Everything you can do with a ruler and a compass you can do with the compass alone
7. Among all shapes with the same perimeter a circle has the largest area.
8. There are curves that fill a plane without holes
9. Much as with people, there are irrational, perfect, complex numbers
10. As in philosophy, there are transcendental numbers
11. As in the art, there are imaginary and surreal numbers
12. A straight line has dimension 1, a plane - 2. Fractals have mostly fractional dimension
13. You are wrong if you think Mathematics is not fun
14. Mathematics studies neighborhoods, groups and free groups, rings, ideals, holes, poles and removable poles, trees, growth ...
15. Mathematics also studies models, shapes, curves, cardinals, similarity, consistency, completeness, space ...
16. Among objects of mathematical study are heredity, continuity, jumps, infinity, infinitesimals, paradoxes...
17. Last but not the least, Mathematics studies stability, projections and values, values are often absolute but may also be extreme, local or global.
18. Trigonometry aside, Mathematics comprises fields like Game Theory, Braids Theory, Knot Theory and more
19. One is morally obligated not to do anything impossible
20. Some numbers are square, yet others are triangular