I "Watched" it...

                Unfortunately, this one will be relatively short. I was absent, so I the third story of math ”watched” it on my free time. I say “watched” because  I couldn’t really concentrate on some boring documentary when I can do so much more at home. Honestly, I wasn’t able to finish it. Youtube was always interrupted at about 40-45 min. Anyway…

                The third episode starts off after Middle Eastern mathematics is passed on to Europe. Frontiers of Space (whoosh! what a fun title, haha) generally dealt with mathematics of 3D or space. There wasn’t much that interested me during this segment. There were some statements about the connection between algebra and geometry that was somewhat nostalgic. I always thought that higher maths were just some more complex combinations of the two. There was also that painting “Flagellation of Christ”, I didn’t understand the meaning behind it but I understood its significance (after looking it up in Wikipedia of course, I couldn’t analyze paintings while listening to Mr. Old man-narrator-host-whose-name-I-forgot). It used the orientation and manipulation of lines to draw an illusion of 3D-y-ness, I couldn’t pull that off even if worked at it for days. As a side note, I thought that Pierre guy was a super nerd.

                Then came those school-of-thought type of discussions. This was a bit hard to follow, but the main gist was that someone was criticizing someone else while everyone else examined each other.  Notable names were Carl Gauss and Bernard Reimann, both German and both made math that much more difficult to understand. Gauss was responsible for that “i” that made equations worse. Reimann did something about expanding geometry, this was the point that my brain stopped listening. Technically I was still “watching” but my memories from that time are blank…

                So to conclude, this story of math was totally boring. The first two had some interesting tidbits of knowledge and trivia, but this one just had head-ache inducing ramblings. Maybe because the previous films were still basic and relatable. As a whole, it wasn’t bad but it lost that “somewhat-interesting-and-funny-but-still-boring” feel and descended into total documentary mode. Note: not as short as I thought it would be…