Timeline for Which mathematical ideas have done most to change history?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2011 at 5:49 | comment | added | Jose Arnaldo Bebita | Maths is the language of science. But the 'language' of maths is predominantly English (or maybe, even German and French). In the (foreseeable and near) future, when the P vs NP millenium problem is solved, we might get a 'universal language' for doing maths - which harks at unification and, hitherto, standardization. And of course, there will then be "more" problems to solve. :) | |
| Sep 24, 2010 at 20:32 | comment | added | Tara Holm | This is discussed in Steve Strogatz's NYTimes column last spring: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/from-fish-to-infinity The Sesame Street video gets right at this! In fact, Strogatz's other columns from this series could be useful fodder for this course. | |
| Apr 24, 2010 at 20:55 | comment | added | Tom LaGatta | Wow Harry, I didn't know you were an expert in linguistics as well as mathematics. | |
| Feb 2, 2010 at 0:53 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | Piraha is so fake. That famous linguist is such a liar. | |
| Feb 2, 2010 at 0:13 | comment | added | KConrad | For a language without numbers in it, take a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_language. | |
| Feb 1, 2010 at 19:21 | comment | added | GMRA | You might even say that this introduction was a first instance of decategorification, I think I saw this point of view written by John Baez somewhere. | |
| Feb 1, 2010 at 19:07 | comment | added | Alex R. | I read somewhere that there are indigenous tribes deep in the Amazon rainforest who have essentially no concept of counting. They quantify two things only as "they are alike." Moreover, it's interesting that having developed no sense of mathematics, studies showed that they had incredible difficulty at drawing even simple geometric objects such as straight lines. Hopefully I can dig up a source on this. | |
| Feb 1, 2010 at 15:10 | comment | added | JCollins | It is interesting to read about modern-day tribes or communities which still don't have counting words above two. They count their livestock by simply having a name for each creature! | |
| Feb 1, 2010 at 15:04 | history | answered | Steven Gubkin | CC BY-SA 2.5 |