Legendary Nerds of the East

               Surprisingly, the Story of Math still continues to amaze me… I mean how can a film be both interesting and boring? The information itself was what kept me awake, most of were actually worth knowing. If only the host didn’t have such a sleep-inducing voice and the film didn’t have those slow-paced scenes and corny visual effects. At least general reaction of oooh, ahhhh, etc. to these corny scenes was what kept me awake most of the time. And because of this I was able to take down decent notes…

            Genius of the East mostly shows the great discoveries involving math and its application as discovered by eastern thinkers. Modern nerd, Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, starts off with China. Who would have thought that the Chinese actually used a primitive type of base 10 numerical system in addition to their own extremely annoying one. The poor worker nerds that built the Great Wall of China had to understand both numerical systems. Why couldn’t they just use one? And I mean the more practically useful base 10 rather than the complexly written and arithmetically difficult Chinese characters. I think that they were just too stubborn and prideful.

In addition, they also linked their numbers with anthropological or divine ideas. This gave their numbers a much stronger meaning and application. Which in turn may have lead them to a predisposition towards numerical patterns and combinations. In the end, the Chinese were able to contribute to modern math such as the Remainder Theorem and basic principles of geometric progression. It’s weird how great concepts such as the geometric sequence came to be just because of stupid reasons such as magic dates and scheduled royal sex.

And then comes Nerd # 2, India. This great civilization is responsible for giving us three integral parts of modern math. First is the basis for the current Hindu-Arabic number system. It was the easiest to use and manipulate which made it perfect for mathematical processes and practical application. I am so thankful towards them, just thinking about using other numerical systems..uhehadflgjnsrgoh, NO. Luckily, Nerd # 2 was able to apply abstract concepts such as nothingness and infinity towards math. This gave rise to contributions # 2 and 3, zero and infinity. Obviously zero is important as a place holder and… uh, some other things. Infinity on the other hand was used to further the teachings of trigonometry. It was used to accurately determine the value pi which in turn improved the understanding of shapes and angles which in turn was applied to other fields such as astronomy and architecture.

Nerd # 3, the Arabs, who at that time conquered a lot of places, compiled and adapted the ideas of those under them. One great adaptation is the Hindu-Arabic number system, now with negative numbers!!! Not really their invention but at least they still cited the origin. And with this new number system a great mathematician, Mohammad al-Kharizmi, gave birth to the spawn of evil and intellect, Algebra. Algebra is a very hard subject that showcase proven generalizations in mathematical processes and concepts.

Eventhough the title states only eastern nerds, the film also showed how the eastern ideas were passed to the west. Unfortunately this part was boring so I didn’t get the important names. But all in all, a man introduced Hindu-Arabic to the west which was denied since the elite then were too prideful and stupid, it was eventually accepted due to ease of use and practicality. Western mathematics started to revolve around quadratic equations and some selfish guy discovered the solution which was passed on to a blabbermouth and his student, etc.

Truthfully, I enjoyed the film. I didn’t fall into a trance as much as the first one and the math facts were much more interesting then before. Most of it I didn’t know about before, I was especially surprised about the origin of Algebra. Even the old mathematicians were intriguing, my favorite was forgot-his-name quadratic solver and the blabbermouth. Their story was funny. Ignoring the occasional boring and stagnant scenes, I would recommend this to others. You could learn a lot from watching it, hope you enjoy it too, haha.