Math: Taking Foot in Asia

China. India. Arabic Empire. These are just three of the biggest civilizations in Asia. Even back then, these civilizations were already established and because of that it is to no surprise that when it comes to discoveries and developments, these three won’t be left behind. One of the things that they developed and learned is Mathematics. Since these empires are big, the application of Math was really beneficial in their day-to-day activities. They employed math in their struggle for survival and protection against their conquerors and it has influences from their culture as well.

The movie has taken the Story of Maths to the Asian region in its second instalment. Say, in China, Chinese believed there are numbers that they consider bad luck. In India, they believed that everything comes from nothing and their goal is to go back to nothing. It is funny and amazing to know how Indians started to use zero.  They started to represent nothing with zero because when a rock is taken away, it would leave a circular hole on the ground.  It’s a good thing that for the second instalment, they confined their documentary in Asia alone. In that way, it would not be very confusing and the viewers would be able to focus mainly on the development of Mathematics on Asia. It is sometimes hard to comprehend the facts that distinguish one civilization from the other if many civilizations were involved in a single documentary. Also, the time to be allotted for each will be less. As a consequence, the delivery of some of the facts will also be sacrificed.

The movie did a great job on fragmenting the story as well as in putting pieces together, in this case, relating the Story of Maths in Asia. The transition from one topic to another is good. They also presented artifacts to add on the details and they even visited places from which they could show the proofs of how Math was used. There were instances where you could not get what the narrator said because he’s a fast talker but overall it is very educating .