“Du Sautoy’s trip around the cities of the great mathematicians”

 By: Kissel Cablayda

The episode is a travelogue to the hometowns of the 17^th century mathematicians. The third episode, “The Frontiers of Space”, presented eleven old geniuses that greatly contributed to the development mathematics. Most of these geniuses are found in Europe, where it was considered as the “world’s powerhouse of mathematical idea.” Professor du Sautoy, with vanity, explores these historical places.

Du Sautoy visited the hometown of Piero de la Francesca, Rene Descartes, Pierre de Fermat, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibnitz, the Bernoulli family, Daniel Oyler, Carl Fredrick Gauss, Janos Bolyai and Bernhard Riemann. From these hometowns, du Sautoy revealed the story of each mathematics geniuses and how they came up with their mathematical discoveries.

Piero de la Francesca, an artist and mathematician, discovered the use of mathematics to make a three dimensional perspective illusion on a two dimensional surface. He is the first one to fully understand the idea of perspective. Rene Descartes, a philosopher, soldier and a mathematician, contributed a significant number of mathematical ideas. One of these is the connection of Geometry and Algebra through graphing (x and y axis) and equation. This idea is commonly used in the field of architecture and engineering. Pierre de Fermat then introduced the use of fun and games to understand mathematics. He also invented the Modern Number theory, the theory of prime numbers, and the little theorem, which became the basis to protect the credit card in todays’ era.

One of the most famous not only in the field of physics but also in mathematics is Sir Isaac Newton. He famously discovered the mechanism of gravity (physics) and the measurement of precise speed and a particular distance traveled at any moment in time or commonly known as calculus (mathematics). His discovery of calculus became controversial when another genius, Gottfried Leibnitz, published the same exact idea on calculus. Their rivalry ends up with Newton being the patent owner of calculus. However, aside from calculus, Leibnitz first invented practical calculating machine that work on binary system, which became the forerunners of the modern computers.

But Leibnitz did not totally lose his pride in calculus as a family of mathematicians supported his idea thus became his followers. They are the Bernoulli family. The family then develops his calculus and discovered the idea of cycloid and the calculus of variation. Another mathematician, leonard Oyler discovered the numbers E and I and the formula for calculating finite sums which is pi squared divided by six, a more precise solution than the Bernoulli’s measurement, which is one and three fifths. Joseph Foriet, another mathematician, works on the mathematics of sound waves. Carl Fredrick Gauss, who was hailed as the prince of math, also contributed several ideas on mathematics, such as the imaginary number (i), or the square root of minus one and also the shape of space. Janos Bolyai discovered the hyperbolic geometry and Bernhard Reimann discovered several geometrical developments such as the multidimensional space and the hypercube.

Like the first two episodes, the movie is still dragging, for the same reason that it provides unnecessary parts or video clips that constantly shifts the audiences’ focus from the main idea. Most of the videos are clips of du Sautoy, walking around the city, drinking or just riding a boat, which is really unnecessary if the episode should present a comprehensive history of the great contributors of mathematics. This would create a general aura that the episode is just about a tour of a professor at the historical places where mathematics bloomed.

However, there are also scenes that some terms are well explained, such as the calculation of infinite sums, where he used glasses of tequilas as an analogy, and there are also terms that leave the audiences dryly hanging, such as the mathematics of the sound waves.

Compared to other forms of medium used in the episode, the audio is the most useful for the audience, where most of the significant and important facts are encoded. That is why it is necessary to watch (or just listen to it) several times before getting the general idea.

It would be useful if the episode identify first who their audiences are, and present clips that directly connect the mathematical terms and formulas discussed, but must with respect to the level of understanding of who they are aiming at. Providing text to terms and names hard to understand should constantly be provided especially that the narrator has a high British accent, and learners from countries who are more acquainted to American English accent, such as Filipino students, would take significant time to digest what the narrator says.

As an educational material, the third episode is less useful for audiences who are less interested in mathematics because the way it was presented doesn’t stimulates the audience’s interest into a higher level.

Overall, the episode is fruitful in terms of the numbers of information presented but less effective in terms of how the information was presented to the intended audiences.