Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Mathematics: Its wonders and mysteries

A reaction paper on The Story of Maths: The language of the universe

           The film was a life-changer. From mind boggling questions of the early civilization, we came by at an idea on how to solve it by recognizing its patterns not only applied in marketing and in economy but on daily life basis.

Our life is all about patterns, indeed Mathematics was the study of patterns. We can evidently it track down when the Egyptians were puzzled on how seasons changes, on how often the river Nile floods. From these, they devised and applied this information to solve trade problems therby giving the birth of some useful mathematical operations; a decimal system based on the fingers on the hands, the unusual method for multiplication and division.

Time is gold as they say so as its discovery. Babylonians have discovered the Babylonian base 60 number system by observing and recording their observation on shadows casted by the sundial, which is also their instrument, on different sun angles - so it is thanks to the Babylonians that we have 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. Equality and justice was prized by Babylonians, these could be accounted on their amazing division of land by just using imaginary squares and rectangles to measure their land not knowingly they discovered another mathematical equation, the quadratic equation.

Finally, the Greeks are the true founders of maths – they were the inventors of proof, which opened up to other sciences and are as used today.

I think Mathematics is an accessible program, since it is a field that builds on its past and becomes increasingly complex.


I have two criticisms and it’s nothing to do with the show. It is just small but the computer graphics used to illustrate his narrations were absolutely terrible. He was sent flying around on slices of Pyramid and hot air balloons, I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he was saying, as all I could think about was how cheap and cheesy looking the animations were. Seriously, they would not have looked out of place a decade ago. It seems silly to knock the program for this reason, but production values are an important part of getting your message across, and doing it badly just doesn’t help. Secondly, his language is too foreign and I can’t cope up when talks fast. Better use some subtitles: D

2 comments:

  1. The documentary has been shot 2008.. not much quite a lot of proper computer graphics.. Know what I'm sayin'? xD

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  2. Well its right that you have to do better when your spreading out your message. So far, the animations on the film is the best they've got and it had got your attention. They are just plain "pangit" but there, they've got you noticing it. Thus, they had relayed much of their message to you.
    And, about the "proof" part, its absolutely right! :)

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