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What can we learn from mathematical geniuses and the history of counting?
And why mathematics is compulsory in schools?
The past is full of mathematical geniuses: Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, and carl Friedrick Guass. I’m going to bet that while you’ve heard of the first three, you may not have heard about the last one. Let’s talk about him.
When he was 7 he was asked to add together all of the numbers from 1 to 100. It took him just a few seconds to give the teacher the right answer. Here is what he realised: 1+100=101, 2+99=101, 3+98=101, which is 50 pairs. So the sum is 50 times 101. Let’s make it even easier — don’t get your calculator out — 50 times 100 is 5 and 3 noughts, which 5000, plus 1 times 50, so that’s 5050. This is the answer. Simple when you know how.
His teacher was astounded. Guass was a child prodigy that went on to have a prolific career as a mathematician as one of the ‘greats’. You can see the shortcut to the answer is to spot the pattern or relationship between the numbers and to break down the calculation to make it simpler.
How did counting evolve over the centuries?
Modern mathematics has over 30 different fields, like algebra, geometry, etc, that are studied in middle-years, and more complex ideas like calculus, that are studied by more…
