Who invented algebra? Algebra was invented by many people over many years, but Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi is known as the “father of algebra” and it is from his seminal work that we get the word “algebra”. The word algorithm also comes from the Latin version of his name “Algorismus”. Algebra is a branch of […]
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How did it take so long to invent zero? Zero took thousands of years to invent because there was no need for it. There is evidence that people have been counting for 50,000 years. Ancient people counted using tally marks. Cave walls, bones, wood, and stones have been found with tally marks scratched into them.
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What is a theodolite? A theodolite is a precision instrument used in surveying. Without it, people wouldn’t have known how tall our mountains were. Theodolites are still used for surveying today, but they have changed a lot to the earlier ones used. These days, theodolites are digital. The theodolite became common in surveying in the
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What is the birthday paradox? It is the fact that you only need 23 people in a room for the chance of two of them having the same birthday being over 50%. And it’s not a paradox. This probability problem is interesting and it is very hard for us to understand for several reasons. It
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What are the mean, median, and mode? The mean, median, and mode are all ways of calculating an average, but they are different, and they have different uses. The mean is what most of us mean when we say the average. To get the mean of a set of numbers, you add them all together
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Where did 0 come from? The concept of the modern zero was invented in India, but the idea of a placeholder for numbers was thought up by the Mesopotamians. We take the idea of the number 0 for granted. We use it regularly throughout the day (probably) and many of the things we use would
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Why did Mozart die so young? No one knows what killed him. However, it was most likely not poison. Mozart died at the age of 35 on the 5th of December 1791. He was at home in Vienna, Austria. Despite his prodigious career and being the most famous composer of his day, he died without
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Why was the abacus invented? It was invented because merchants needed to keep an inventory, trade was taking off, and the powers that be wanted their tax.. The English word abacus came from the Latin word abax, which came from the Greek word abax, which meant table or tablet. It could have come from an
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What is the golden ratio? It is 1.618. The golden ratio appears in nature, in art, in buildings, and in logos, along with countless other places. It is called the golden ratio because anything that has these proportions is considered to be perfect. It is written as Φ, which is the Greek letter phi. You
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What is the Fields Medal? It is a four-yearly prize given to mathematicians under the age of 40. It is the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It is named after a Canadian mathematician called John Charles Fields. The prize is a medal, similar-looking to the Nobel Prize medal, and 15,000 Canadian dollars, which, as
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