Mathematics, Making Sense of the Impossible

             The second movie of the series was entitled The Genius of the East. When the ancient Greeks turned down, the development of Mathematics stood still in the West. But in the East, the progress of Mathematics continued. In the second part of Marcus du Sautoy’s journey, he visited China, India and in the Middle East to explore how mathematics gave a role in helping these places. He first went to China and explained how mathematics gave an idea on how the people built the Great Wall of China to protect China’s growing empire. He discovered the first use of the decimal place value system which is almost very similar to the values we use today. He showed the patterns in numbers used by the Chinese and the development of the early version of the Sudoku which was what they called, The Magic Square. I was amazed by this magic square and it’s really like a magic where the sum of the vertical, horizontal and diagonal numbers are the same. He also showed how the ancient Chinese believe in the mystical powers of numbers which still exist today. Marcus learned how they use mathematics when the emperor needs to sleep with the empress and with the other women to ensure the most favorable succession. At first, I was shocked because there are a lot of women he needs to sleep with, but later, I just appreciated the mathematical logic behind it. He also learned how to find the exact value of a thing in which other things are given like finding the price of a plum and a peach. Mathematics had its own origins in ancient Chinese to work with equations.

                He then went to India and discovered how the symbol for the number zero was discovered. Zero is one of the most important things in the development of mathematics and the Indians were able to discover it and use it for their daily lives. This discovery had a great impact in our mathematics today. The Indians introduced zero from something to nothing and they were also the first ones to introduce the negative numbers, infinity and trigonometry. Marcus also explained how the pi was discovered.

                Lastly, he explained the developments of mathematics in the Middle East which were the inventions of the new language of algebra and the solutions of cubic equations. Marcus explained how we came up with the Hindu-Arabic numbers and the progress of the geometry. He also explained the use and importance of the Fibonacci Sequence.  Lastly, he observed the spread of the knowledge from the East to the West through some mathematicians.

                The second part of the series was able to show other interesting facts about mathematics. The documentary was very informative and its contents were fascinating.  The presenter was also quite natural in front of the camera and he delivered the information gently. The graphics were very entertaining. I’ve seen my classmates laugh in some points of the story because the presenter and the effects were always trying to make the story fun.

The documentary did not just told me about numbers and such but it also told me that there is really something behind these numbers and patterns which we use today in our daily living. It gave me the chance to love mathematics even if it’s hard enough to understand. After all, mathematics is not just the study of numbers, symbols, and patterns but it is also making sense of the impossible.