The Interesting Side of Math

Math. Math. Math. I have had enough of numbers for the past three semesters and I thought this sem I was finally going to be freed from the clutches of math. Hell, no. But this sem should be different. It should be all about the appreciation for math. And we started it with a movie. 

The first episode of The History of Maths: The Language of the Universe, travels way back to the long history of man’s relationship with numbers starting in Egypt to Mesopotamia and later on Greece. This part of the series shows how important the ancient concepts of mathematics are to the development of the world we have come to know. 

In this episode, we see the foundation of math as a tool for everyday problems, such as how to divide nine loaves of bread between 10 people or setting the pattern of the flooding of the Nile River. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians in general were the early people to cultivate the use of numbers but it was the Greeks –i.e., Pythagoras, Euclid, Plato and Archimedes and others– who took the extra mile in enriching math from just an instrument for counting to being a highly analytical body of science.

The movie was, let’s face it, not that appetizing to me as a student-who-seriously-hates-math, which makes me want to say that honestly, I got a little drowsy in various parts of the movie. And I would have enjoyed it more if the animation was actually done better; they made the movie look like it was created some 10 years ago. It would be of the viewers’ advantage if there were not disturbing images flying across the screen so that we would be able to focus our attention more on the narrator’s words.

Nonetheless, I would like to note how immensely informative the movie was and that it was pretty interesting seeing the ancient way people do arithmetic.

 Heck, I’m still not into the theorems and formulas but rather on the interesting thing about math that is its history. That is why if I am to grade the movie from 1-10 (10 being the highest) I would give it an 8. It’s good to know that I could actually spend one and a half hour in a class room, in a math class, with me not cringing. Good, historical movie.