Legacy of the Asian Geniuses

The second episode of the four-part Story of Maths entitled The Genius of the East is a continuation of the evolution of mathematics through time showing the contribution and innovation of the succeeding eras to the growth of math as a discipline.

Before the action began and the movie was rolling, Marcus du Sautoy said that the innovations of mathematics in the east influenced the west which led to the birth of modern mathematics. This was when I hit spacebar and wondered what made him say that. I mean, what about the US of A and everyone else? Then again, after the movie experience I became proud of where I came from  and it made me realize that anyone can be prominent if he really wants to be one. There is only one appropriate tagline for this feeling and this time I say it with pride: Asians.

It opens with the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy exploring China, walking some distance through the Great Wall. The Great Wall at present is known as one of the best tourist attractions and it is also a fact that it was built a long time ago as protection to China form its enemies. Apart from great engineering, he shares that great calculations were done before we see the great wall as it is today.

Another great innovation by the Chinese in mathematics was their number system. The Chinese used the decimal place value system when calculating in rocks, although in writing, they used a different method. Take nine hundred twenty-four, for example. Instead of writing it as 924, they used unique symbols and wrote it as nine hundreds, two tens, and four. They used symbols for tens, hundreds, thousands and so on which is really weird and odd but at the same time, liberating. It can be quite refreshing to solve numbers in a different manner than is usually used.

It is also quite interesting to know that unlike the previous civilizations, the Chinese dealt with numbers with fascination and not just out of sheer necessity. It turns out that numbers are mystical to them and that one ruler, the Yellow Emperor even believed that numbers have cosmic significance and included it to his ruling. It makes me all the more happy because a favourite number of mine (8) is lucky to them. It is just a bit unfortunate that another favoured number of mine (4) is treated the opposite way and should be avoided according to them.

The best part for me was their development of a “magic square”, a somewhat early version of Sudoku which I so love. This for me, with all of the sincerity that I possess, tops all their other innovations in mathematics in manifesting their genius.

Another innovation presented by the Chinese was the remainder theorem which is now used in internet cryptography.

In the second part of the movie, Sautoy travels to India, another eastern country whose leaps in the universe of math are just as impressive as that of China’s and whose genius is revealed.

Like the Chinese, the Indians used the decimal place value system. The Indians invented the number zero that is used not only as a mere place holder, which was lacking in the number system of the previous civilizations. This helped a lot in solving problems that were difficult to answer before zero appeared. It was also in this era when quadratic equations were discovered.

Again, this was the part where sleep has gotten the best of me and I ended up dozing off.

Overall, I like this second episode better than the first partly because there are less of those dull backroom interviews and more interesting facts are shown. After watching the documentary, I was able to say that it makes me feel proud being Asian especially if their achievements could influence the way the world runs. Indeed, Asians rule.