STORY OF

EMATICS
 .......... STORY OF
EMATICS
From creating the pyramids to exploring infinity

Anne Rooney

fIl
ARCTURUS
Aclmowledgements
Wim thllnk, rv th= of my Flluhook f.und!;rho hllre htlped in
i'llriOU! "".ry<, parriro/Ilriy .\fi,hlltl A ,ui {ZiJIlO Jilltd (lIllrrllrd
FaCIIlrylCllmbridj(e FIlCIIlry/BMron lItA), Gordon Joly (London),
John Nllllj(hrvll (Camhridge Aillm '68, The Open Univ/'rriry
FIl,ulry),Jlldi SchofteM (London/GlIllrdilln Nru'!llnd .Iledill) Ilnd
Bill Tb01f'P50n (LonJonlCllmhridge Fllro/rylCiry UK Fllmlfy).

ftl'*
ARCTURUS

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I'rimed in China
 Contents
Introduction: The Magic of Numbers 6

Chapter 1 Starting with numbers 8

" ' here do numbers come from? • Numbers and bases • More numbers, big and small

Chapter 2 Numbers putto work 34

Putting two and twO tO~,'ether • Special numbers and sequences · Unspeakable numheN

Chapter 3 The shape ofthings 60

The measure of everything • Early breometry • Trigonometry

Chapter 4 In the round 92

Curves, circles and conics • Solid geometry • Seeing the world · Other worlds

Chapter 5 The magic formula 120

Algebra in the ancient world · The birth of albrebra • \Vriting equations
• Algebra comes into its own • The world is 1l(.'Vcr enough

Chapter 6 Grasping the infinite 144

Coming to terms with infinity . The emeq,rence of calculus • Calculus and beyond

Chapter 7 Numbers at work and play 166

Cheer up, it may never happen · Samples and statistics · Statistical mathematics

Chapter 8 The death of numbers 186

Set theory • Getting fuzzy

Cha pter 9 Provi ng it 194

Problems and proofs • Being logical • Mat were we talking about?

Glossary 204

Index 206
 I NTR O D UCTIO N

THE MAGIC OF NUMBERS

Think of 111111111herfrom 1 to 9. everything from th e hehaviour of sub-

Multiply it by 9. atomic particles to the expansion of the
If y ou have a two-digit 1lI1111ber, add the universe i~ Lased on mathematics.
digits together.
Take away 5. MATHS FROM THE START
Multiply the 111tl1lber by itself The earliest records of mathematical
activity - beyond counting - date from
The allswt!r is 16. How do es it- work ? 2,000 years ago. They come from the ferti le
It all depelUls 011 a crucial bit of 1l11mher ddtas of the Nile (Egypt) amI the pbins
'IIIagic: adding tog ether the digits of between the nVQ river:;:, the Tigris ~nd
1111tltiples of 9 always gives 9: Euphrates (Mesopotamia, now lraq). \Ve
9: 0+9=9 know little of the individual m:lthematicians
18: 1+8=9 of these l"arly l"Ulrures.
27: 2 + 7 = 9 a.lld so 011. Around 400sc the Ancient Greeks
developed an interest in mathematics. They
Th erellfter, it's all pltlin stliling: went heyond their predecessors in that they
9- 5 = 4,4 X 4=16. were interested in finding I"Ules that could
he applied to any problem of a similar type.
ThL')' worked on concepts in mathematics
here is plenty more magic in which und~rlie all th:!.t has come since.

T numbers. Long ago, some of Some of the greatest mathcmaticI:!.IlS of :!.Il

the earliest human ci~i l izations time lived in Greece and the Hell enic
discovered the strange and fascinating centre of Alexandria in Egypt.
quality of some numbers and wo\'t~ them A~ the Greek civi lization came ro an end,
into their superstitions and religions. mathematics in the \Vcst entered a dead
Numbers have entr:mced people ever since. zone. Several hundred years btcr, lslamic
and still hold the pOwer to unlock the scholars in th(· Nliddle East picked up the
universe for us, by providing a key to thr hOlton. Baghdad, built around 750, became a
secrets of science. Our understanding of dazzling intellectual centre where Arab

6
 I NT ftOD UcnON

Europe was struck by th e cataclysm of th e

Black Death (1347-50). Between a quarter
and a half of the populat ion died in many
European countrics. l t was the 16th cenOiry
before much new progress was made, bur
then there was a flurry of intellectual
acrh~ry, in mathematic~ as in science, art,
philosophy and music. The invention in
Europe of the printing prcss accelerated the
spread of new learning. European
Toledo ill Spaill htYonn rhe jfareilwy rbroujfh which mathematicians and scientistS began to
"Iff
Arah leamiT/jf fIIte11'd Europe ill rh,' J Irh cmmr)'- shape modern mathematics and to find
myriad applications for it.
i\-luslim scholars pulled tOgether the legacy \Vhile this has been the path of
of both Greek and Indian mathematicians development of present-day mathematics,
and forged something new and dynamic. many cultures have developed in parallel,
Their progress was b'l"eatly aided by their often making identical or comparable
adoption of the Hindu-Arabic number discoveries but nOt feeding into the main
system which we now use, and given .~tory centred on North Africa, the Middl e
impetus by their interests in astronomy and East and Europe. China kept itSelf separate
optics, as well as the requirementS of the from the rest of the world for thousands of
Islamic calendar and thl! need to find the years, and Chin(;!Se mathematics flouri shl!d
din'eoon of A-tecca. Howl-'Ver, the demands independently. Th e meso-American societies
of Islam wh ich were once a spur to in South America developed their own
dl!velopment eventually stifled further mathematical :.-yStems tOO, but they were
growth. Jv[uslim theol o~,'y ruled against wiped out by European invaders and
intellectual activity that was considered colonists who arrived in the 16th century.
spiritually dangerous - in that it might Early Ll(lian mathematics did feed into th e
uncover truths that should stay hidden, or Arab tl-adition from arowld the 9th centul1',
challenge the central mysteries of religion. and in recent years India has bt'comc a rich
Luckily, the Arab presence in Spain source of world-class mathematicians.
!lude the transfer of mathematical At the very end of our story, a single
knowlt'dgc to Europt' quite straightforward. number l>ystcm and mathematical ethos
From the late 11 th ct'nrury, Arab and Greek has sprL'ad around t he globL', and
texIS were translated into Latin and spread mathematicians from all culmrcs including
rapidly around Europe . Japan, [ndia, Russia and the US work
There was little new development in alongside those of Europe and thL' Middle
mathematics in Europe during the M:iddle East towards similar goals. Though
Ages. At the point where a few people were mathematics is now a global enterprise, it
equipped to carry mathematics forward, has only recently become so.

7
CHAPTER 1

STARTING
with numbers

Before we could have mathematics, we needed

numbers. Philosophers have argued for years
about the status of numbers, about whether
they have any real existence outside human
culture, just as they argue about whether
mathematics is invented or discovered. For
example, is there a sense in which the area
of a rectangle 'is' the multiple of two sides,
which is true independent of the activity of
mathematicians? Or is the whole a construct,
useful in making sense of the world as we
experience it, but not ' true' in any wider sense?
The German mathematician Leopold
Kronecker (1823-91) made many enemies when
he wrote, 'God made the integers; all else is
the work of man.' \Vhichever op.inion we incline
towards individually, it is with the positive
integers - the whole numbers above zero - that
humankind's mathematical journey began.

III tb~ b~gillllillg .. CIW~II/m C01i1d pllillt, bllt colild tbey COli lit?
~ ....n", wn" ""M""

CAN AN IMALS COUNT?

Could the mammoths count thei r
attackers? Some animals can apparently
count small numbers. Pigeons, magpies,
rats and monkeys have all been shown to
be able to count small quantities and
distinguish approximately between larger
quantities. Many animals can recognize if
one of their young is missin ~ too.

IV/" ngll"lte fill a~cts of0111' lift by III/mbns. bllt (bat
bas I/Of ak,ays hem rbe crISe. Tbe w;'lIIfe halld <1}flS
added ro clixJ:s ill 1-1-7'), tbe Sl'Colld halld arOlllld 1560.
FOUR M AM MOTH S OR
M O RE MA MMOTHS?
Imagine an early human looking at a herd of
potcntiallullch - buffalo, perhaps, or woolly
mammoths. There arc a lot; the hunter has
no number system and can't count them. He
or she has a sense of whether it is a laq,rc
herd or a small herd, recognizt!S that a

Where do numbers
come from?
Numbers are so much a part of our
everyday lives that we take them for
granted. They're probably the first thing
you see in the mor ning as you glance at the
clock, and we all face a barrage of numbcrs
throughout the day. But there was a rime
before number systems and counting. The
discovery - or invention - of numbers was
one of the crucial stcps in the cultural and
civil development of humankind. It enahled
ownership, trade, science and art, as well as
the dL'vclopmellt of social Structures and
hierarchies - and, of course, brames, puzzles, Mlllly agaillst ollr is ilion likdy ro mSiIIl' a safr
sports, gambling, insurance and even OlltrOlllf alld a mM! for blllltrrs t''lllippt'd ollly
birthday parries! with prilllitive WMpollS.

10

HOW TO COUNT SHEEP WITHOUT
COUNTING
As each sheep leaves the pen, make a notch
on a bone or put a pebble in a pile.
When it's sheep bedtime, cherk a notch or
a pebble for each sheep that comes in.
• If there are pebbles or notches
unaccounted for, go and look for the
lost sheep.
• If a sheep dies, lose a pebble or scratch
out a notch.
• If a sheep gives birth, add a pebble or
a notch.
single mammoth makes easier prey, and
knows that if there arc morc hunters the
task of hunting is hath easier and safer.
There is a clear difference between one and
'more-than-one', and between many and
few. But this is not counting.
At some point, it becom~ useful to
quantify thc extra mammoths in some way -
or the extra people needed to hunt them.
Precise numbers are still not absolutely
essential, unless the hunters want to
compare their prowess.
TAllY-HO!
Moving on, and the mammoth hwlters
settle to herdin g their own animals. As soon
as people star ted to keep animals, they
needed a way to keep track of them, to
cht..'Ck whether all the sheep/goatslyaks/pigs
were safely in the pen. The easiest way to do
this is to match each animal to a mark or a
stone, using a tal/y.
W HER£ 00 NUMB ERS COME FROM?
It isn't nec~sary to count to know
whether ~ set of objects is complete.
\Ve c~n glance at a tahle with 100 places
set and see instantly whether there ~re
any places without diners. One-to-one
correspondence I S learned early by
children, who play games matching pegs to
holes, toy Dears to beds, and so on, and was
learned earlr br humankind. This is the
basis of set tht..'Ory - th~t one group of
objects can be compared with anothcr. We
can deal simply with sets like this without a
concept of number. So the early farmer can
move pebbles from o ne pile to another
without counting them.
The Ilecd to record numbers of objects
led to thc first mark-m~king, the precursor
of writing. A wolf hone found in the
Czech Repub lic carved with notches
more than 30,000 years ago apparently
rcprt..'Senrs a tally and is the oldest known
mathematical object.
11
 STARTIN G WITH NUMBlRS

FROM TWO TO
TWO·NESS ONE, TWO, A LOT
A tally stick (or pile of A tribe in Brazil, the Piraha, have words for only 'one', 'two'
pebbles) that h as been and 'many'. Scientists have found that not having words
developed for counting for numbers limits the tribe's concept of numbers. In an
sheep can bi.' pur to other experiment, they discovered that the Pirah;i could copy
uscs. If there arc thirty patterns of one, two or three objects, but made mistakes
sheep-rokens, they can also when asked to deal with four or more objects. Some
be used for tallying thirty philosophers consider it the strongest evidence yet fo r
gOatS or thirty fish or linguistic determinism - the theory that understanding is
thirty days. It's likely that ring.fenced by language and that, in some areas at least,
tallies were used early on to we can't think about things we don't have words for.
count time - moons or days
until the birth of a baby, for
example, or from planting to cropping. The concrete objects counted heralds a concept
realization that 'thirty' is a transferable idea of numher. Besides seeing: that four apples
and has some kind of independence of the can be shared out as two apples for each
of two people, pL'ople discovered that
four of anything can always be divided
into two b'TOUPS of two and, indeed, four
'is' twO twos.
Ar this point, counting became mort:
than mllying: and numbers nl.:!eded names.

BODY COUNTING
Many cultures developed methods of
counting: by using parts of the body. They
indicated different numbers by pointing at
body parts or distances on the body
following an established sequence .
Eventually, th!;' names of the body p:lrts
probably came to stand for the numbers and
'from nose to big toe' would mean (say) 34.
The body part could be used to d!;'note 34
sheep, or 34 trees, or 34 of allY thing else.

TOWARDS A NUMBER SYSTEM

How nllllly hln~ 71'e gotl A Porrugllese villryrmi Makin g a single mark for a .single counted
work" lIotcbes II Ulllystick ro "ecord Mcb bnrkt1 of object on a stick, slate or cave wall is all very
grllpn rhllr passer by. well for a small number of objects, but it

12
 WHER£ DO NUMBERS {OM£ FROM?

quickly becomes unmanagl.!able. BeJore In l\Jlesopotamia (current-day [raq), a

humankind ("(mid use numbers in any more
complex way than simply tallying or
counting, we needed methods of recording
them that were easier to apprehend at a
glance than a row of strokes or dotS. \Vhile
we tan only surmise from observing non-
industrialized people as to how verba l
counting systems may have developed,
there is physical evidence in the form of
artefactS and records for tht:' development of
written number ~yswms.
The earliest number systems were
related to tallies in that they began with a
series of marks corresponding one-tn-one
to counted objects, so 'lIT' or ' .. .' might
represent 3. By HOOne, the Ancient
Egyptians had developed a system of
symbols (or hieroglyphs) for powers of ten,
so that they used a stroke for each unit
and a symhol for 10, then a different symbol
for 100, another for 1,000 and so on up to
1,000,000. \Vithin t':!ch group, the symbol
was repeated up to nine times, grouped in
a consistent pattern to make the number
easy to recognize.
simibr system existed from at least 3000Be.
A still-familiar simple grouping syStem
is Roman numerals. Numbers 1 to 4 are
represented by vertica l str okes :
I, II, III, 1111
The Romans gave up at Ill, switching
to a symbol for five, V. Later, they
sometimes used rv for illl. [n this case the
position of tbe vertit':!l stroke determines its
meaning - five minus one. In the same way,
lX is used for nine (ten minus one).
Different symbols are used to denote
multiples of five and ten:
V 5 L 50 D 500
X", 10 C:: 100 M '" 1,000
Numbers are llUilt up hy grouping unilS,
tens and so on. So 2008 is represented by
MMVlll. The characters for 5, 50 and 500
can't be lL~ed more than once in a number,
since VV is represented by X, anrl so on.
Some numbers are quite laborious
to write. For example. 38
is written XXA'VU]. The

~:~
system doesn't allow

1111' I!! '

subtraction from :Inything
I, II, III, II· 1111, III' 1111111, except the next symbol in the
numeric:!] sequence, so 4Y

I u ,. ~
can't be written IL (50 minus
I); it has to be written XLLX
(50 minus 10; \0 minus 1).
The next Step is a system
1,000 10,00() 100,000 1,000,000
which instead of repeating
the :.ymbols for a number
Em'~Y Egl'ptiml hhroglypbs repn!Si'lIIt d IlIIlIIbl'rs I~illg POW"" of tw, (A..,"\.,"'( for 30, for instance)
(lml cOllid sb{J'J) JIIlmben lip to 9.999,999. uses a ~ymbo l for each of the

"
'{.sl ",n,", W'ffi "'M" "

digits 1 to 9, and thell this is used with the
symbols for 10, 100 and so un to show how
many lOs, IOOs and 1,000s arc intended.
Th e current Chinese system \rnrks on this
principle . So:
11]-r- 4 x 10",40
but;-G: 10+4",14
andlZll-rlZ!l 4 X 10+4 = 44
This is kn()wn as a multiplicative grouping
system. The number of characters needed
to represent numbers is more regular with
this typl! of ~ys [em. Numbers 1 to 10 are
shown by one digit; numbers 11 to 20 are
shown by twO digit~; thereaher, multiples of
10 up to 90 :lrc shown by two digits (:20, 30
ctc.) :md the orn er numbers up to 99 are
shown by three digits. Roman llullu;,rals, on
the other hand, need between ant' :lIld four
digits for the numbers 1 to 10 and hetwc(;!11
one and eight digits for numbers up to 100.
CIPHERED SYSTEMS
The hicroglnJhic ..,ystem described above
(see page 13) was only one ofrh ree systems
uscd in Ancient Egypt. There were twO
cip hered systems, demotic and hi erati c. A
ciphered system nOt on ly has different
symho ls for the numerals I to 9, but
distinct symbols for each of the. multiples of
10, 100 anti 1,000. H.ieratic is th e old est
known ciphered system . It could e..'\: pre.~s
numhers in a very eompact form, hut ro use
it people mU St learn a large number of
different symbols. This may have served a
soeia J purpose, keeping numbers 'specia l'
and so endowing those wl1l) knew them

HOW OLD 15 THE COW AND HAVE YOU BEEN PAID?

In Babylon (from southern Iraq to the Persi an Gulf) two systems of writing numbers were
used. One, cuneiform, consists of wedge.shaped marks made by a stylus in damp clay
which was then baked. A different system, curvilinear, was made using the other end of
the stylus, which was round. The two scripts were used to represent numbers for different
purposes. Cuneiform was used to show the number of the year, the age of an animal and
wages dUE. Curvilinear was used to show wages that had already been paid.

(SO . 1) (60) 40 · 2 ~

(60)] .. 11 (60)'+ 47(60)+111 _ 2S11.~

 W HER { DO NUMB ER S COME FRO M ?

, , , ,
UN ITS
U 11\ ll.<j "\ '" - t. =? rt
~
-
~

TENS
A A 1\ >r 7J .::.I- 51 llll
HUNDREDS
~ )l ? ? ?," /3~.3
~ ! "i ~ ~ !!l; ~ ~ ~
THOUSANDS

TEN S OF THOUSANDS
1 Egyptlllll burnt/(' mflflt'rflir qfrbe New Killgdllm
(l600-JOOOsc) /lsed /f101T' symbols rbrlll ""foil', 1I1r/!.:illl!,
H UND REDS OF
THOUSANDS ? IIIfIIlbny lIIore call/pllet bur barrier ro lellrl/ W /lse.

with extra power, forming a mathematical position of the numerals to show their
elite. In many cultures, numbers have been meaning. This ean only work when there is
closely allied with divinity and magic, a symbol for zero, as otherwise there is no
and preserving the mystery of numbers way of distinguishing between num bers
helped to maint:lin the authority of the such as 14, 204 and 240, a problem
priesthood. Even the Catholic Church was encountered by the Babylonians.
to indulge in this
10,000 1,000 100 10 1
jealous b'l.lardianship
54,321 == 5 X 10,000 4 X 1,000 3 X 100 2 X 10 1 Xl
of numbers in the
European .M.iddle 10,070 == 1 >< 10,000 a x 1,000 a x 100 7 X 10 1 XO

Ages. Other cil>hcrcd

systems include Coptic, Hindu Brahmin,
Hebrew, Syrian and early Arabic. Ciphered
systems often use letters of the alphabet
to represent numerals .
GETTING INTO POSITION
Positional number syStems, such as au r own
modern SYStem, depend on the position of a
digit to sho\v its meaning. A positional
system de\'elops from a multiplicative
grouping system such as Chinese by
omitting the characters that represent 10,
100 and SO on and depending only on the
A positional system loan show very
large numbers as it does nOt need new
names or symbols each time a new power of
lOis reached .
l1lt~ Mrli~t positional ~y;rem that em he
dated was developed by the Sumerians from
3000 to 1OO0BC, but it was a complicated
system that used both 10 and 60 as its bases.
It had no zero until the 3rd century Br:,
leading to ambiguity and probably confusion.
Even after zero was introduced, it was never
used at the end of numbers, SO it was only
possible to distinguish between, say, 2 and

IS
 STAItTlN G WITH NU MBllt~
200 from the cOntext. This was sometimes
easy and sometimes not. The statement
'1 have 7 sons' was unlikely to be interpreted
as '1 have 70 SOilS' - but a statement such as
'An army of 3 is approaching' contains
dangerous ambiguity. An army of 300? No
problem. An army of 3,000, or 30,000 or
even 300,000 is a very different Illa tter.
One of the two number systems in use in
Ancient Greece, that most popular in
Athens, used letters of the Greek alphabet
to represent numbers, bCb>lnning with alpha
for I, DNIl tor 1 and SO on up ro 9. Next,
individual letters were used for multiples of
ten and then for muh:iples of lOO, so that
any three-digit number could be
represented by three letters, any four-dib>lt
numher by four letters, and so on. They
didn't haw enough letters in their alphabet
to make it up to 900 with this system, so
some of the numerals were reprL'Sentcd by
16
SUMERIANS AND BABYLONIANS
The fertile area of Me~opotamia, between
the two river ~ ngri~ and Eu p hrates, has
been called the cradle of civilization. Now
in Iraq, it was settled by the Sumerians,
who by the middle of the fourth
millennium BC had established perhap~ the
earliest civilization in the world. Invading
Akkadians in the 23rd century BC largely
adopted Sumerian culture. The period from
around 2000BC to 600BC is generally called
Babylonian. After this, Persian invaders took
over, but again continued rather than
replaced the culture of the area.
archai c letters rhey no longer used for
writing. For numbers over 999 they added a
tick mark to the right of a letter to show rhat
it must be multiplied by a factor of 1,000
(like our comma as a separator) or the letter
11111 as a subscript to show multiplication by
10,000. To distinguish numbcrs from
words, they drew a bar over numbers.
GrL'ek philosophers larer came up with
methods of writing very large numbers, nor
because they especially needed them, but to
counter claims rhat larger numbcrs could
nOt exist since t here waS no way of
representing them.
The Mayans used a complete positional
system, with a zero, used thoroughly. The
earliest known use of zero in a Mayan
inscription is 36nc- Mayan culture was
discovered - and consequently wiped out,
along with the Mayan civilisation - by
Spanish invaders who came to Yucatan in
 W HER£ DO NUMBUS COM E nOM ?

the early 16th century. The Mayan number M~()p otami:l

ahout ;\0650 refers to nin e
system was based on 5 and 20 rather than Hindu numbers.
10, and again had limitations. The first
perfect positiona l system was the work of 2 3 4 5 6 7 B 9
the Hindu s, who used a dot to represent a
= - + 1 ..., I
vacant position . " "
THE BIRTH OF Adding a diagonal line hetween the
H I NDU-ARABIC NUMBERS horizontal strokes of the Brahmi '2' and
The numhers we use today in the \Vest have a verti ca l lin e to the right of the strokes of
a long histOry and originated with the In dus the Brahmi '3' m:lkes recognizable versions
valley civilizations more than 2,000 years of our numeral~.
ago. They are first found in early Buddhist The Brahmi numerals were part of a
inseri ption s. ciphered loystcm, with separate ~ymb()ls for
The use of a single stroke t() stand tor 10,20,30 and SO 011.
'one' is intuitive and, nOt surprisingly, many
cultures came up with the idea. The MOVING WESTWARDS
orientation of the stroke vari es - while in The Arah writer Ibn al- Qifti (\ 172- 1242)
the -\;Vest we still use the Hindu-Arabic records in his OJTOIIO/O&'Y of tbe SeiJo/tlTS how
vertica l stroke. (I), the Chinese use a an Indian scholar hrought a hook to the
horizontal stroke (-). But what about the .~t'.c()ll d Ahisid C:lliph Abu Ja'far Abdallah
other numbt:rs? The squiggles we now use ihn Muhammad al-Mamllr (7 12-75) in
to represent 2,3,4 and .~o on? Baghdad, Ira q. in 766 . The hook W:lS
The earliest, 1, 4 and 6,
date from at least the 3rd
century Be :md are found BRAHMAGUPTA (589-668)
111 the In dia n Ashoka The Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta
inscriptions (these record was born in Bhinmal in Rajasthan, northern India. He
thoughts and deeds of the headed the astronomical observatory at Ujjain and
Buddhist Mauryan ruler of published two texts on mathematics and astronomy. Hi s
India, Ashoka the G reat. work introduced zero and rules for its use in arithmetic,
304-2328C). Th e Nana and provided a way of solving quadrati c equations
Ghat inscriptions of the equivalent to the formula still used today:
second century Ile added 2, 7
and t) to the li st, and 3 and 5 .\'. _h:i:..)4t1(+'?
are found in the N asik eaves 2"
of the 1st or 2n d century AD . Brahmagupta'5 text Brohmasphufaliddhanta was used to
A text written by the explain the Indian arithmetic nef'ded fo r astronomy at the
Christian NestOrian bishop House of Wisdom.
Severns Sebokht livin g in

17
 STARTING WITH NUMBlRS

probOlbly the Bmhmaspbllfasiddbantn (The mathematician al-Khwarizmi (c. 815),

Opening of tbr U7Iiverse) written by the and 011 the Use of tbr Indian Numerals by
IndiOln mathematician Brahmagupta in 618. the Arab Abu Yusuf Yaqllb ibn [shaq
The caliph had founded the 1-1ouse of al-Kindi (830).
Wisdom, an edueJtional institute that led A system of counting angles was adopted
intellectual development in the Middle East for depicting the numerals 1 to 9. It's easy
at the time, translating Hindi and Classical to see how the Hindu numerab could he
Greek texts into Arabic. H ere, the converted by the addition of joining lincs
BmlmltlsplJllftlsiddbtlllftl was translated into to fit this system - try counting the angles in
Arabic and Hindu numbers tOok their first the straight-lin e forms of the numerals
step tOwards the \;Vcst. we use nOw:
The diffusion of the Indian numerals
throughout the 1\'liddl e East was assured
by two very important texts produced at
the Housc of \Visdom: 011 tbe CaJC1IJat;ofl
with Hindll Numem/s by the Persian
1Z~~Sb lB~
MUHAMMAD IBN MUSA Al·KHWARIZMI, c7B0-8S0
The Persian mathematician and astronomer al·Khwarizmi was born in
Khwarizm, now Khiva in Uzbekistan, and worked at the House of
Wisdom in Baghdad. He translated Hindu texts into Arabic and was
responsible for the introouction of Hindu numerals into Arab
mathematics. His work was later translated into latin, giving
Europe not just the numerals and arithmetic methocls but
--1"1
also the word ' algorithm' derived from his name.
When al·Khwarizmi's work was translated, people
assumed that he had originated the new number system
he promoted and it became known as
'algorism'. The algorists were those who
used the Hindu·Arabic positional
system. They were in conflict with
the abacists, who used the
system based on Roman

with an abacus.

18

Zero was adopted around the same time;
zero, of course, has no angles. The Arab
scholars devised th e full positional system
we lISC now, abandoning th e ciphers for
multipl es of ten used by the Indian
math ematicians.
Not long after, the new fu sion o f
Hindu-Arabi c number systems made il5
way to Europe through Spain, whi ch was
un der Arab rul e. The earli est European tt;'xt
to show the Hindu-Arabic numeral s was
produced in Spain in 97 6.
ROMA NS OUT!
Of course, Europe was already using a
number system when the Hin du-Arabi c
nOtation arrived in j\'loori sh Spain. Mter
the fall of the Roman Empire in th e \Vest,
tradition ally dated A04 76, Roman culture
was only slowly eroded.
Th e Roman num ber system was
un chall cnbTCd for over 500 years. Alth ough
th e Hindu -Arabi c numerals crop up in
,\ fLow works produced or copied in th e
10th century, they did not enter th e
main stream for a long time.
1 I
5,000 (I)
5 V
10 X 10,000 (I)
50 L zero properly.
50,000 (I)
100 C
500 0
1,000 M 100, 000 (I>
W H ER { 00 NUMBERS COME nOM?
A FU SS ABOUT NOTHIN G
The conce pt of ze ro might seem the
antithesis of counting. Wh ile zero was only
an absence of items counted, it didn't need
its own symbol. But it did need a symbol
when positional number systems emerged.
Initially, a space or a dot was used to
indicate that no figu re occupied a place;
the earliest preserved use of this is from the
mid·2nd millennium Be in Babylon.
The Mayans had a zero, represented by
the shell glyph:
~
This was used from at least 368e, but
had no influence on mathematics in the
Old World. It may be that Meso-Americans
were the first people to use a form of zero.
Zero Glme to the modern world from
India. The oldest known t ext to use zero is
the Jain Lokavibhaaga, dated AD458.
Brahmagupta wrote rules for working
with zero in arith metic in his
Brahmasphutasiddhanta, setting out, for
instance, that a number multiplied by zero
gives zero. This is the earliest known text
to treat zero as a number in its own right.
AI·Khwarizmi introduced zero to the
Arab world. The modern name, 'zero',
comes from the Arab word zephirum by
way of Venetian (the language spoken in
Venice, Italy). The Venetian mathematician
luca Pacioli ( 1 445~1514 or 1517)
produced the first European text to use
While historians do not count a 'year
zero' between the years 1 Be and ADT,
astronomers generally do.
\9
 STARTING WITH NUM BlRS

LETTERS FROM ABROAD

The Romans used written numerals before they could read
and write language. They adopted numbers from the
Etruscans, who ruled Rome for around 150 years. When
the Romans later conquered the Greek·speaking city of
(umae, they learned to read and write. They then adapted
the numerals they had taken from the Etruscans to make
Roman letters.

As the Empire grew m extent and FibOlltlcci, the It,iliall

sophistication, the Romans needed larbrer
and larger numbers. They developed a
system of enclosing figures in a box, or
three sides of a box, to show that they
should be multiplied by 1,000 or 100,000.
The system wasn't used consistently,
though, so
fV1 could me:ln either 5,000 or 500,000.
Arithmetic is virtua lly impossible with
R oman numerals and this was to lead to its
eventual replacement.
XXXVIII +
XIX
LVI! (38 + 19 = 57)
For the purposes of accounting, taxation,
census taking and so on, Roman
account;lIlL~ always used <In abacus. Hindu-
Arabic numerals offered a considerable
advantage in that the positional system
made arithmetic w ith wrinen numbers very
easy. Botb Fibonacci (Leonardo Pisano,
[.1170-1250) and Luca Pacioli, both
better known for otber achievements, were
instrumental III popularizing the
matbeTlTaticiall, /efll1led
abollt Hilldll-Al"flmc
I/lfTlTemir ar a boy "/:.rbile
tl"lwellillg ill .Nonb Afiiro
-;;;itl1 hir rrader/a/ber.
Hindu-Arabic system,
particularly amongst
tbe mercbants and
accountants. Even so,
it took many centuriC!:>
and considerable
struggle before
Europe moved
over completely to the use of the
Hindu -Arabic system (see Unspeakable
numbers, pa~,'c 56).
Roman numerals continued to he used
for many things long after they were
replaced in mathematit~Jl functions. They
'The nine Indian figures are:
987654321
With these nine figures, and with the sign
o .. any number may be written. '
Fibonacci, Liber Abaci, 1202

20
 W HER£ 00 NUMBERS (OM£ FROM?

NOT OVER YET

CHRONOGRAMS It would be a mistake to
Phrases that incorporate a number in Roman numerals- think that our numbers have
chronograms -were often used on tombstones and books. stopped evolving. tn the last
By picking out certain letters and rearranging them, a date century we have seen the
is revealed. For example, My Day Is Closed In Immortality is development and :.ubscquent
a chronogram commemorating the death of Queen declin e of the zero with a
Elizabeth I of England in 1603. The capitals read MOO!! slash through it, 0, to
when put together, which corresponds to 1603. A coin distinguish it from capital
struck by Gustavus Adolphus in 1627 includes the latin ' 0' in computer printouts,
inscription Ch,lstVs DuX ergo tflVMphVs ('Christ the leader, and the reprl!Senration of
therefore triumphant') which is a chrono gram for digits as a collection of
MDCXWVII o r 1627. straight lines so that they can
be shown by illuminating
bars on an LED display.
are still often used on elock faCl!S, fur Computer-readable character sets, too, have
example, and to show the copyright date of been developed for usc on cheques and
movil!S and some TV programmes. other financial documenL~, taking our
numerals fur from their cursive origins.
In addition, we have developed new
types of notation for writing numbers
so unimaginably large that our anCl!Stors
could have had no conceivable usc for them
(sec pab'es 26- 33).

Lllm Pacioli 7L"IlS f1 Frallciscall frial: III rbis pmTrair Bar rodes lISe lilies I)f differe1l1 tbickllesses (I)

by Jm:I)/IO de Barb"'7 (I;. 1495), be if dmTl)llstratillg /"!'p/"~mt /llimbers: tbeY( all' reml by CIJmplltfl7zrd
I)/I~ I)f Eudid's rbel)/"ems. sca mnrs 'Il·bicb ~ce' tbem ar lilimbers.

21
 STAItTlNG WITH NUM Bl lt~

IlL'Ople may be required -

VERBAL NUMBERS mking hold of or pulling on
A new s~tem for writing numbers, and particularly for the fingers, tor example.
entering them on a calculator or other machine, was A highly developed
developed in 1993 by Jaime Redin. Called 'verbal numbers' it system, more complicated
aims to be more intuitive and quicker to use than the than ordinary finger
standard positional system. For example, the number counting, was used in both
4,060,087 would be written 4M60T87 and would be Europe and the Middle East.
entered into a calculator by It was more like a sign
pre~ing 4 - M (for million) ... 60 - T ce:lffiGJeB language, and enab led
~GJfI3m
(for thou!><lnd) ... 87. The number ~mCDm counting up to 10,000 and
f _ 1 lDWW
4,000,007 would be written 4M7 even beyond by making
and entered as 4 - M - 7. shapes with the fingers. It
was evidently in usc for a
lon g time as it is described
Numbers and bases by the 7th-century English writer the
\Ve usc a base-IO number ~}'Stem, called a Venerable Bede (c. 672-735) and in a
decimal system. In fact, though, whatever 16th-century Persian. dictionary, Furbl/ugi
system we used we would call it 'base 10' DjiJ}(l/Jgiri.
because that's how we define 'base' - it's the
point at whieh we f,rive up counting units
and start counting 1,'TOUps. In a positional
number system, it means that we Start
reusing digits with' 10' meaning 'all the
digin. we have, plus 1'. bl 3 base-2 system,
1 is represcnted by 10, and in a basc-5
system, 5 is represented by 10. For us, '9+ \'
is represcntcd by 10.

FIN GERS AND THUMBS

\-Vt;' have probably developcd our decimal
system because most people have ten
fingers. Although it seems vel)' obvious that
we ca.n count on our fingers, different
cultures through the ages have de\,e]opeJ
different ways of doing it. Fingers Imy be
extended or filldeJ down to indicate a
number; joints may be counted as well as
fingers; one hand may be used to show tens
and the other units, Dr interaction het\vcen
Pl'opll' dOIl'/ jlar rollin 011 fillfl:l·,r. Thir hWiy-rolll/tilll{
rysrml if IlSl'd by rill' Fartl Of Ptlpl1il NrJ) GllillM.
BA CK TO BAS E
D espite the obvious recourse to tingcrs as
3 counting aid, not all cultures have used
a decimal system of counting. Indeed, we
owe many of our strange weights and

22

ORIENTAL FINGER BARGAINING
Secret systems of bargaining with the
fingers were widespread between Algeria
and China for centuries. The two
participants needed to know the
approximate price they were negotiating ~
whether it would be in units, tens,
hundreds or thousands. One negotiator
would hold the index finger of the other to
indicate 1 (or 10, or 100), the index and
middle fingers to indicate 2 and so on.
Clasping the whole hand meant 5. In
different places, different methods were
used for the numbers above 5. In some
places, for instance, 6 was indicated by
twice gripping the fingers fo r 3, in others
by grasping the thum b and little finger.
measures to cultures that have used
different counting systems.
Binary, or hase 2, is used by computers
as it (.~Jn designate onc of twO states,
TRUEIFALSE, or hold a negative or
positive electrical charge. But there have
heen human users of hinary systems. Some
of the oldest trihes in Australia usc a
counting system in which the names of the
numbers arc defined in relation to twO and
one. The Gapapaiwa of Milne Bay have sligo
'one', 1"/111 'twO', then 1"1111 11/11 Jago for 'three',
which is literally, 'nl'o and one', and rlltllJ1a
rlll1 or 'n\'o and [\.vo' for 'four', 1"IIt11lla 17111
l/1ll sago ([\,1'0 and [\.\'0 and one) for 'five'.
Although it differs &om computer binary in
thatit uses one. and twO rather than zero and
one, it sti ll has on ly twO distinct numhcrs.
NU M 8ERS AND BASU
The mTerllftrlQIllt! filllglltlg~ Qfrom1l1erce: 11 tm/I"lst
btlrgflills 7:litb (/ local nufi vmdQr /let/I" tbe fin if" rbe
Te17·tlCQttl1 Al""llty, Xinll, Cbi/lli.
Often, the negotiators hid their hands inside a
sleeve or concealed them in a robe so that
onlookers could not see the price agreed.
The indigenous peoples of Ti erra del
Fuego and partS of South America have
used number systems with bases three and
four. Base-4 systems may have emerged
hcc<luse four is thc largest numher of items
in a row that mOSt people can intuitively
apprehend without counting. For this
reason, the 'five-barred gate' method of
tallying has heen widel), used for counting
everything from sheep in :l fi eld to days
spCnt in prison.
HH II
== 5 + 5 + 5 + 2 '" 17
Thi s 'rule of four' li cs hehind many
cu ltural oddities. In ancient Rome, for
~ m.n", wn" "'M""

widely Q'iCd dozen and gross (144 = 12 X 12),

Thr" an IIM/ly ways of fomning 011 rbe fillgny.
Tbt I11(Jrr ((IIIII/IOII/Ise I",SI' 5 01" bllSe 10.
in~[ance, the first four sons were given
'proper' names, such as Marcus or Julius,
hut after four they were given number-
names: Quintus (fifth), Sixrus (sixth),
Septimus (sL'Vcmh) and so on.
A f(;!w culn\l"t~s lise a quinary (base-5)
system, including the speakers of Saravcca,
a South American Arawakan language,
the IiOllb'Ot, a head-hunting tribe trom
the Philippines and some [ndOllcsi;m
~ocietics. The hll-JS had a quinary system
with names for numbers up to at least
10,000. It is ca:.y to sec how a quinary
system could have evolVl'd frOIll cOllnting
on the fingers of one ham!.
Other common systems arc base 6,
duodecimal (base 12) and vigesimal (hase
20). Bases 12 and 20 have often been used
with other bases in a complex ~1'stem where
a small base number is used for low
numhers (up ro 5 or 10) and a large one for
numbers O\'er a certain limit. Remnants of a
base-l0 SYStem linger on in the French
' quatre-\,ingrs' for 80, for example. Ve~tigcs
of a hase-12 ~ystem art' all arowld us, in the
the 11 inches in a foot and 12 months in
a year.
The ancient Sumerians had a
sexagcsima I syStem - one tha t used hase-60.
ft is clearly difficult to rememher 60
different names for the digits, So for lower
numhers they used base 10. From the
Babylonians, we still haw 60 seconds in a
minute and 60 minutes in an hour; when we
write 2 hrs 14 mim 3H secS we arc using
their hase-60 ~1's[em. It is not entirely clear
why they USL-d 60, but sixty
has many factors (numbers .i t
can be dividL-d by), making it
a useful base. Arab
mat hematicians
calculations and then mO\~llg
back to 60 to express their final result.
How MANY FINGERS DOES A
COMPUTER HAVE ?
For bases higher than 10, we need to rope in
other ~1'mbols to stand for digits we don't
have in our decimal system . Computers
count either in binary or in hexadecimal
(hase 16 = 2"). TIl represent the numbers
hen\'een 9 and 10 (= \6) in hexadecimal
notation we use letters of the alphabet.

Decimal equivalent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Base 2 (binary) 1 10 11 100 101 110 111
Base :3 1 2 10 11 12 20 21

"'''''
Base 5
1
I
2
2
3
3
10
4
11
10
12
11
13
12
Base 6 1 2 3 4 5 10 11
 N U M 8E R S A N O BAS ES

Decimal 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Hexadecimal
Decimal
9
I.
A
Tl
•
1.
C
19 20
D E
21
F
22
Hexadecimal 10 11 12 13 14 15 I.
Decimal 23 24 25 2. 27 2. 29
Hexadecimal 17 1. 19 lA 1. lC 10
Decimal 30 31 32 33 34 35 3.
Hexadecimal 1E 1F 20 21 22 23 24

Clearly all numbers above 10 mean

different things depending on the hase
system used, so there is plenty of scope fur CARTOON COUNTING
confusion: '11' in hexadecimal means 17 in Cartoon characters are most often
decimal. Computer hooks often use the drawn with three fingers and a
hash Si~,'11, #, hefore a hexadecimal number, thumb. Had we all evolved to look
so '#11' = 17 (and 23 would be represented like Homer Simpson (though
by'll). perhaps less yellow, slimmer and
Because computers count m with more hair), we
hexadecimal, some strange numbers are might now use a ,;..oy.,
beginning to creep back into L·veryday life, base·S counting
too. "Vhile we sti ll buy eggs by the dozen, system in which '10'
we might also buy a memory card that will
hold 512 MBofdata, oran iPodwith 8GB only eight doughnuts.
of storage. The decimal ~"yStem has by no
means taken over completely.

1\11111] irrolf are n'lIdt11

ill '1l1l11nities rbtlr dOIl'r
reilire fa tbe decimal
rysTi'1Il - fIIcb as eggs
wid by rbe doul/.

25
 STARTING WITH NUM BlRS

W HEN IS 1,000 NOT 1,000?

Although for convenience we think of a kilobyte as 1,000 bytes and a megabyte as 1,000
kilobytes, the terms are ambiguous and mean different numbers in different contexts.
Because computers work with binary, a kilobyte is often used to mean 1,024 (= 2 1 ~ bytes and
a megabyte to mean 1,024 kilobytes (= 1,048,576 bytes). But they can also be used to mean
1,000 bytes and 1,000,000 bytes respfftively. To try to end the confusion, new units of
mebibytes and kibibytes were introduced in 1998. A kibibyte is now officially 1,024 bytes and
a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes; a mebibyte is 1,048,576 bytes and a megabyte is 1,000,000.
But confusion still reigns. In common usage, a megabyte is 10" bytes (1,000,000) when
measuring hard disk size, is 231 (1,024 x 1,024) bytes when measuring computer memory
and often file size, and 1,024,000 (1,000 x 1,024) when measuring USB flash drives or the
old 1.44 MB flop py disks. In either system, a byte = 8 bits.

More numbers, big and small Natural numbers have a special status
Th e first numbers humankind used related hecause they can be related om~-ro-one to
directly to object s in the real world; indivisible objects in the real world. For
they were the positive integers. _ ......-~_ convcnience, intinity is thc namc
But th (;'se are not th c on ly givcn to th e largcst possible
numbers we recob'llize now. A~ number, th c cnd of counting -
time has passed, we have though clearly this could never
developed ways of quantifying exist since. howt..'Ver large a
an absence with negative number is we could always add
numbers, showing fragrnenrs or one more, and allother, and so
portions that are less than one, on. lntinity is represented by th(;'
and representing numbers so ~ymbol 00, first used by J ohn
large they tax our normal \Vallis in his book D e scctiQflibus
systems for writing numbers. fOil/CIS (Of collical sectiolls),
We have (;'ven develoJled a way publish(;'d in \655.
of talking about imaginary
(complex) numbers. LESS THAN ZERO
Ncgative numbers don't relate
INTEGERS directly to the physical world in
Integers are the positivc and that we can't co unt a negative
negativc whole numb ers,
extcnding infinitely in both Tbc scale all a Ib~ro/Omcrer spallf
directions from (ami including) IIrgarive alld pofirive mnpU"Iltlires,
zero. The positive intc~,'ers arc alld is II follliliar applirarioll of
ca ll ed natural numhers. lIegarivt J/Il1nlll'/"s.

26

'God created the integers. All the rest is the
work of Man.;
leopold Kronecker, 1823~91
number of objectS - we can't sct' 'minu!S twO
cows', for example. But as soon as concepts
of ownership emerge, negative numbers
have a meaning. They were used early on m
indicate a debt (money or goods owed).
They are also used in some types of scaled
measurement, such as rcmperature.
Negative numbers are first mentioned in
a Chinese text called ]illZhtlllg SIIaflsbll (Tbe
Nille Chapters on the A1athrJJlaticai Art). It
was compiled by several authors during: the
period from the 2nd century Be to the 1St
century AD . The Bakshali Manuscript, an
Indian text of uncertain date but no later
than the 7th century, also uses negative
numbers, though they are confusingly
indicated by a '+' sign. Th e minus sign was
first used to show a negative number by
Johannes WIdmann in 1489. It is from the
Indian texts that negative numbers entered
western mathematics.
PARTS AN 0 WHOLES
Some thinb'S arc nOt divisible -
we can't speak of two and a
h:Ilf people or three
quarters of a grain of
AIallY rbillgr {OIl be
bmkm don'lI iura
slIIallcr (/lid s1I1allCI"
portimls - but a l(}tlf
Inv('m illto {"/"{/"Illbs is
of lilllr IISC.
MOllE NUM8US, 81G AND SMAll
sand. But some things - and most nH..':ls""Ures
- can be divided into portions smaller than
a unit. A loaf can be broken in half, or a
person can drink a third of a hottle of wine,
or a stick may be half a metre long.
Fractions are a useful way of expressing the
!Size of a portion .
Fractions may be expressed as one
number (the numerator) divided by another
(the denominator), such as Y, (one di\~ded
into four parts). A fraction is also called a
rational number as it expresses the ratio
between numbers - so).':i shows the ratio
1:4. In a decimal fraction, numbers a her the
decimal point indicate tenths, hundredths,
thousandths and so on according to their
position. Decimal fractions can express
irrational numbers - those which are not a
ratio of twO whole numbers and have an
infinite number of digits after the decimal
point. hntional numbers caused problems
for early mathematicians (see page 56). The
Persian mathematician and poet Omar
Khayyam (1048-1131) accepted all positive
numbers, rational and irrational, so had a
much broader number system than th e
Grecks, who refused to acknowledge
irrational numbers.
27
 STARTING WITH NUM BlRS

al-Maghribi al-Samaw'al
'5exagesimals and sixties are to be used sparingly or never provided <l systematic
in mathematics, and thousandths and thousands, treatment of how to use
hundredths and hundreds, tenths and tens, and similar decimal fractions to give
progressions, ascending and descending, are to be used approximate values foc
frequently or exclusively.' irrationalnumhers.
F ri'ln~ois Viete, 1579 Decimals came quite late
to Europe . F ranccsco Pellos
wrOte a treatise published in
UNDER AND OVER THE BAR rtaly in 1492 that secms to use a decimal
The Egyptians used a uniquely perplexing point to divide units from tenths, but his
form of fractions around 1000Be, and the work docs not show a rigorous
Greeks followed their example 500 years understanding of what he had done.
later. In India, Jain mathematicians wrote of Christoff Rudolff, writing in a German
operations with fractions in the Sthallollgo accountancy tt'xt in 1530, was the first to
Sutra, c. 150BC. show a thorough wlderstanding of how to
Th e modern way of writing fractions work with decimal tractions, though he used
with a bar or vinculum dividing the
numeratOr and denominator stems from the Tbe sraw,' 0fSiJlloJ/ Srt'Vill ill Bruges. Apflrt /ram
I-l indu method of writing ont' numeral bis E:o"k ill scimce fllld marbnnfltia, be ;'weur~d rbe
above the other, used in the BmbJlltl-sphllttl- fil':rt/tlll d yachr llIbicb co1l1d rr/T'''t'I ns fosr af a bone.
siddhlll/fa ([.610). Arab mathematicians added
the bar to separate the twO figures. The
first EuropL'an mathematician to usc th e
fraction bar as it is used now was Fibonacci
(d 170-1150).

GETTING TO THE POINT

Dccimal fractions were recorded in Indian
units of measurement around 1800Bc.
"Veights found III th e archaeological
remains of :l settlement l':l11cd Lothal in the
Indus Valk'Y area (modern-day Gujarat)
weigh 0.05, 0.1, 0.1, 0.5,1,1,5,10,20,50,
100, l{Xl and 500 units (a unit being around
2H grams or one ounce). Abu'l Hasan
Ahmad ibn Ibrah.im al-Uqlidisi ([.920-80)
wrOte the first known Arab text on the lL~e of
decimal fractions. 1n the 12th century,
the franian ma t hematician Ihn Yah)'a

28
 MOllE NUM8ERS, B IG AND SMAll

a vertical bar instead of a decimal point.

Th e first European trt::ltiseon dceimals was
produced by Simon Stc'~n in 1585 , and he
is gencrally creditcd with introducing
decimal fractions into Europc. Stcvin used a
diffcrent notation from that we use now,
writing 5.912 in the foml:

5 @ 9 @ 1 ® 2 G)

The French mathematician Fram,:ois Viete

(1540- 1603 ) cxperim cntcd with several
ways of writing dccimal fractions. H e tried
raisin g and undcrlinin g the fractional part
(627 ,115 ~), and showing me dccimal as a
fraction (617,125 I,~~:;;;;), using a vertical
stroke to scparate thc integral and decimal
partS (627,12515 12,44) and showing the
intcb'Tal part in hold type (627,125,5 12,44).
But he was nOt to comc up with the mcthod
which has stuck. Th e carli est printcd usc Pl"lllIfOis Viru l1;orhd for tb~ ClJIII7 of fhlll] of
of the decimal point was by Giovanni Nfw(lny. By Cl"flckillg a dplJn' IfJd by t};~ Spflllish,
j\1agini (1555- 161 7), an Italian map-maker, b~ mflbhd tbe Prmrb 10 r~ad clle-my despatcJJfs.

EGYPTIAN FRACTIONS
The Egyptians had a strange way of working with fractions. They had special characters for
half, ~ , and two.thirds, en"" . Thereafter, a fraction was shown by the character c:>
written above the denominator, which was shown using the usual Egyptian symbols for
i'iit
numbers. SO III means 7.
1;
However, with the exception of )1" the Egyptians only used unitary fractions (those
with a num erator of 1); there was no way to show a numerator, so it was impossi ble to
write % or Yt. To complicate matters further, it was not allowed to repeat a fraction - so
%could not be written as ~ + K Instead, it was necessary to fin d a way of making %from
unique frac t ions:

29
 STAItTIN(; WITH NUM8lllS

17 being zeroes and the last

GOOGOL AND GOOGOLPLEX I. This can be extended to
The terms 'goog ol' and 'googolplex' were invented by show other numbers as
Milton 5irotta (1911-1981), the 9-year-old nephew IlItLltipk'S of a power of ten.
of American mathematician Edward Kasner (1878-1955). For instance, 10 J = 1,000 and
A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes; a googolplex is 1 so 6.93 x 10) = 6,930 and
followed by a googol zeroes. 6.93 x IO-J '" 0.00693.
These numbers are inconceivably large. There are fewer Scientific notation is much
than a googol fundamental particles in the known universe easier to understand, and
(fundamental particles are sub-atomic; there may be 10'" more compact to write, than
in the universe). If you could write down a googolplex in a long string of digitS.
standa rd 1 0 point type, it would be 5 x 1O~ times longer The first use of scientific
than the diameter of the known universe, and writing at notation is not known, but it
two digits per second would take I Ou times the age of the was already current in 1863
universe to complete. when an encyclopaedia
included the followin g text:

astronomer and friend of Kepler, who used 'a om'tllt jor« (q ual 10 10,000,000,000
it in 1592. Even so, it did not I..-arch on until timrs thr /''IIIII( givell hy the qlllJtimt of J 7IIet1'e
J ohn Na pier used it in his t;lblcs of by I secol/d 0frill/e, rhar is, I d (J metre/secol/ds'.
logarithms over t\VCnty years later. Napier
sugb"Csred in 1617 that tht: fidJ stop or
COlllma could be used, and settled on the
full stop in 16 19, though many European
commies have adopted the I..'Olllilla as their
decimal separator.

BI GG ER AND BIGGER
\-Vhilc fractions and decimals provide a W'3y
of writing very sma ll numbers,
developments in science have led to a need
for W:J.ys of representin g and r:llking about
increasingly large numocrs.
Scientifi c notanon uses powers of ten to
show both vc ry large and vcry sma ll
numbers. A power of ten shows how many
fi gu res come befor<.' or after the decimal
point. For example, 10 'ft is 1 followed by 18 Joh1l Napi!'l; Ihl'illt'C7II0" Of oflogarithms,
zeroes. in the other dirL'Ction, 10-1• is a bdirvl'tilbllllhl' world 1l'01i1ti (01111' ro alll'llJ ill

decimal point followed by 18 digits, the first l'ilhl'I' 1688 0/' 1700.

JO
 MO RE NU MBER S, B IG AND SMAll

THE SA ND RECKONER
In what was effectively one of the
world's first research papers,
Archimedes boasted in the 3rd
century Be that he could write iI
number larger than the number of
grains of sand it would take to fill
the universe. He was able to do this
using the new Ionian num ber
system and his own notation,
which in effect used powers and
was based on the 'myriad', or
10,000. He worked with powers of
a myriad my riad, or 100,000,000.
Archimedes' estimate of the size of
the universe, while far larger than
previous figures, was nowhere near
modem estimates. His number of
grains of sand was 8 x 10" .

SClENT1FIC NOTATION US NAME EUROPEAN NAME

10' Thousand Thousand

10' Million Million
10' Billion 1000 million (milliard)
10" Trillion Billion
10" Quadrillion 1000 billion
10" Quintillion Trillion
10" Sextillion 1000 t rillion
10'00 Googol Googol
10'01 Centillion
10= Centillion
10-« Googolplex Googolplex
10 to power 10'00, or 1 followed by googol zeroes

31
 STARTING WITH NUM BlRS

The usc of scientific notHion also gets

n"2- n' 3"2 is 3' - 3 x 3 - 9
arowld the confusion over the different
n"3 - n' 3"3 is 3' - 3 x 3 x 3 - 27
names used tor large numbers in the US and
n"4", n' 3"4 is 3' '" 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 "" 81
elsewhere. Although names arc the same up
to a million, they then diverge. Th e
American billion is only a thousand million Doubling the " symbol to n""m means
(10''), while a European hillion is a million 'calculate n"n III times' and n"""m means
milli On (lO l!) and 109 is JUSt called a 'n""m' 111 times'.
thousand million. The pattern continues
with even larger numbers. So while
As science and mathematical proofs
demand writing ever larger numbers, even 3"3 is 3' "" 27
scientific notation becomes unwieldy and
finally unmanageable. Solutions to the 3"""3 is 3"(3"3) '" 3" "" 7,625,597,484,987
problem include using" or - to indicate
powen; of powers, and even using polygonal And tripling tbe " symbol to """ rapidly
shapes to indicate powers. leads to very large numbers:
In 1976 Donald Knuth proposed a
notation using" to indicate powers. The 3"""3 is 3""(3"""3) ""
expression n"m means 'rai se n to the power 3".." ,'9" ,s.o,\II!'''3,,6' \ '9',...,,'W
of III (n X n III times)'

THE LARGEST NUMBER EVER

The largest number that has been cited in any
theoretical mathematical problem is called
Graham's Number, named after American
mathematician Ronald Graham (right). It was
devised by Graham as the upper bound of a
possible solution to a problem. The num ber is so
large that it is impossible to write it in any of the
notational forms covered here. It is said that if all
the matter in the universe were turned into ink
it would not be enough to wri te the number out
in full. Ironically, experts suspect that the real
answer to the o riginal problem is '6'.

32

As the number of " characters incrt":lses,
the numbers get harder ro read (as well
as unimaginably large). John Conway
(b. t 937) suggestS condl'nSing the numbers
by using right arrows-to indicate the
number of" characters. So
n"""4 would be written n ..... 4 ..... 3.
Another way, called tetration, expresses
n Cd) starts from 156 Jj~ and evaluates this in
nn
n a~ ' n.
22
2 24 16
So 42 is 2 •2 •2
Another system, Steinh:ms-i\1oser notation,
uses polygona l sh:tpe.~ to show how many
times a numher muSt be raised to a power.
@] (a numher 'T/ in a square) is equi'~Jlent to
'the numher n inside n triangles. which are
MO R( NU M 8{ RS, B IG AN O lMAll
all nested' . At each ~tage, the number is
ev:.tluated and lL'>Cd fur the next stage, so
1 in a square is 1 in twO nested triangles.
The first nested triangle is 21 '" 4, so the
next nested triangle is 4~ = 256.
® (a number /I in a pentagon) is equiva-
lent to 'the number n inside n squares,
which are all nested' . Originally, this was
the limit ofStcinhaus's system and he used
a circh:, for this: @.
the same way 256 times. Steinhaus gave
the numher @ the llame a tJlCgll, and @
the name lIIogistolJ. Most'r~~ number is 1
inside a polygon with mega sides.
• 65,536
MOVING ON
Now that we are equipped with l1rgt' enough
numbers, we em begin to put them to work.
\iVhat numbers can (k) on their own is the
suhject of pure mathematics; wh:lt they can
do when they are recruited into the service of
other discipline.~ is applied mathematics. A
culture must develop :It iL'ast a littl e pure
mathematics before it can start appl~'ing
numbers Il) real-world problems such as
building, economics and :lStronomy, SO we
will start with number theory.
 CHAPTER 2

...- NUMBERS
".'
•
.....
I . ,~~
,
•
'to
put to work

Counting is a good start, but any more

sophisticated application of numbers requires
calculations. The basics of arithmetic -
addition, subtraction, multiplicanon and
division - came in to usc early on through
practical applications.
As soon as people started to work with
numbers in this way, they began to notice
patterns emerging. Numbers seem to play
tricks, to h.'1VC a life of their own and to be able
to surprise us with their strange properties.
Some arc simple bur elegant - like the way
we can muJtiply a two-digit number by II
simply by adding the digits together and
putting the result in the middle:
63 x 11 :: 693 (6 + 3 '" 9, put 9 between 6 and 3).
Some are breathtaking in their
sophistication. Number theory, which includes
arithmetic, is concerned with the properties of
numbers. Ancient people imbued numbers with
special powers, making them the centre of
mystical beliefs and magical rituals. Modem
mathematicians talk of the beauty of numbers.

A 11/1/1/ /Ires 1/1/ IIbflCIIS ill fI Jllpllllere >I1:m·d shop, c.1 890.
 ~
/ ' NUM8ERS PUT TO WOR k

/~
Putting two and two
together
Thl'_ rules of arithmetic provided the
ancients with methods for working out
fairly simple sums, bur as the numbers
involved grew larger, tools to help with -
and eventually to mechanize - calculation
become increasingly important. Tools
ro simplifY addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division emerged very
early on. Over the last few centuries these
simple aids have nOt been sufficient and our
tools for working with Ilumbers have
hecome increasingly complex and
technically sophisticated, until we now have
computers that carry out in a fraction of a
second calculations that would have
seemed quire inconceiv:Jble to the earlieSt
mathcmatici:ms.

STRIN GS, SHELLS AND STICKS

The earliest mathematical tOols wcrc A Sooin fCboolboy IISes a Rllssiall ab,wlf - fhr schocy
counting aids such as tallies and beads, - during tl11lfIth,·/eSSOIl ill 1920. AbacllSes {IIY
shelL~ or stones. The Yoruba in west Africa still widely I/wd ill Rllssifl, bur 110 umgl'r ill schools.
used cowry sbells to represent objects,
always reckoning them in b'TOUPS of 5,20 or rope. 1t could be used to record ownership
200, for !!Xample. Other civilizations have of goods, to calcubte and record taxt!S and
used different objects. census data, and to Store dates. The strings
In lvleso-America, the Inca ci,~lization could be read by Inca acc()untanl5 called
had no written number system but used flllipuralJlayors, or 'keepers of the knots'.
khipll (or flllipll) - groups of knotted srrinbr:; Different-coloured strands were apparently
- to record numbers. A khiplI consist~ of used to record differi ng types of
coloured strands of alpaca or llama wool, or information, such as details relating ro wal;
sometimes COtton, hanging from a cord or taxes, land and so on.

Shdls hac~ hel'lI lISell liS colilltillg aids

{/lid {/S C1111"fllry.

36
 PUTTING TWO ANO TWO TOGETHER

KNOTTY PROBLEMS
The position ot a group of knots on a khipu
shows whether that group represents units,
tens, hundreds, etc. Zero is indicated by a
lack of knots in a particular position. Tens
and powers of ten are represented by
simple knots in dusters, so 30 would be
shown by three simple knots in the 'tens'
position. Units are represented by a long
knot with a number of tums that represents
the number, so a knot with seven turns
shows a seve n. It's impossible to tie a long
knot with one turn, so one is represented
by a figure-ot-eight knot. Khipus recorded
information such as population censuses or
details of crops harvested and stored.

Alrhollgh it lookr lif f a dfforativr jrillgr, tbr

khipu 1:.'ar a sopbisticaud new llllting aid. T bis
ollr was n/(ulr ill Prru c.1.J 30- 15 32.

N orth American tribes also used
knotted strings, called W01JlP01Jl, and knots
in leather straps have been used in less
sophisricated arrangement<; by the Persians,
Romans, Indians, Arabs and Chinese.
In Papua New Guinea tally ropes were
IlScd to record the trade in gold lip pearl
shells. In Germany, bakers l.L~ed knotted
ropes to tally bakery orders until the late
19th cenmry. Herdsmen in Peru, Bolivia and
&."uador used a furm of kbipll, with !,'TOUpS of
white strings for sheep and !,'Oats and green
strings for cattle, unril the 19th century.
The practice has proved remarkably
enduring. In Tibet, knotted prayer strings
still help Buddhists to keep track of their
prayers; the same function is performed by
Muslim prayer beads and Catholic rosaries.

_.
.•. .....
.....
~

...,.po
-
~~ .:-. "~
:.
, .

- ,
37
 T IMES TABLES
Tables of numbe rs for looking up the
results of calculations, partkularly
multiplication, have been used for
thousands of years. Clay tablets dating
from around 1800BC preserve ancient
multiplication tables used in
Mesopotamia . Tbe idea of compiling
tables of tbe resu lts of common
arithmetic operations is as old
as written mathematics. Th,
mathematicians of ancient Babylon
inscribed their work on clay tablets;
many of these present mathematical
tables for multiplication, squares and
cubes and their rOOL<;, and reciprocals.

BEADS AND BOARDS A dlly pIau flum c.2500BC, follllll ar Lagash

Some cultures developed quite in~:,''C nious
tOols and systems to help with calculations.
One of the more familiar is the abacus,
developed around 3000BC in Mesopotamia
and still in use in some eastern cultures. It
began life as a boar d or slab covered in sand,
used in ancient Babylon for aligning
numbers or writing; it later developed into a
;11 Ira,!, cumaills fI record of IlIIlIlberr ofgOilts
fllld shup.
board with lines or grooves for counters.
Th e modern abacus with counters threaded
on to rods or wires requires more
technolobrical acl\':lncement to produce, but
is used in much the same way. The position

SHOW ME THE MONEY

The name Chancellor of the EXChequer for the
.-
~1I/~
minister in charge of the country's finance in
the UK comes from the use of the 'exchequer'
board ~ a counting board similar in design to a
chess board used as an abacus.

Tb~ F.xch~'!tur

ch"rg~d wirh
was rb~ 1I/~di~vfll

COIl~clillg
English il/Sfitlltioll
rOYfll ,TIJflllles.
-
38
 I' lIfTlNG lWO AN D lWO TOGHHU

century and is still used there

LOGARITH MS as well as in the Middle East
logarithms offer a quick way of carrying out long division and China. Earlier Chinese
and multiplication. They work on the principle that to mathcmaticians used rods of
multiply powers we can add them together. different lengths which they
laid out in matrix on a
10 ' _10 special table or board. Th t
10' "" 100 principl e was similar to the
10 ' x 10'"" 1,000= TO ] abacus in that the position of
looking at Ule powers: 1 + 2", 3 the rods indicated their
value. [n Europe, merchantS
The logarithm of a number n is the power to which the continued to use the aiJa(.'Us
base number (in this case, 10) is raised to give n. So the until at least th e 17th
logarithm of lOis 1 because 1 0' '" 10; the logarithm of 1 00 century, when it wa s
is 2, because 10' "" 100. The logarithm of 2 is 0.30103 replaced by arithmetic
because 2'1.10,0. "" 1O. algorithms foll owi ng the
Any two numbers can be multiplied together by adding ascendance of Hindu-Arabic
their logarithms. So log0010 + 10910100 "" logoo 1,000. num eral~ .
The subscript shows that we are using logarithms to base Certain early Arab
10 - i.e., working with powers of 10. mathematicians took ovcr
The same p rinciple of working with powers obviously the basic algorithms for
holds wiUl other numbers besides 10: calculation from India, and
around 950 Abu' l Hasa n
Ahmad ibn Ibrahim 011-
(16 x 1,024 '" 16,384) Uqlidisi adapted them for
use with pen and paper
So using logarithms with a base of 2, the logarithm of 16 rather than the traditional
would be 4. logarithms can be constructed to any base. Indian dU5tooard.

TRI CKIER CALCULATIONS

of a bead or cowner denotes whether it
Stands for a unit, a t CIl , a hundrcd and so on.
A practised, proficient user can move the
beads or counters at gn~at speed, carrying
out calculations as quickly as many latcr
mechanical calculators. As late as the 1920s,
accountantS training in the City of London
had to be able to usc an abacus as well as
arithmetical methods.
The abacus spread to Japan in the 16th
As both science and commerce bt.."Clme
more advanced and sophi sticated, the need
to work with large numbers, fractions and
decimals increased . Calculations hecamc
hard and time-consum in g and pcople
.~earched for ways to make them more
manageable. Tb e mOSt ingenious and
enduring solution was the development of
loga rithms by the Scottish mathematician
John Napier in th e early 17th cClltury.

39
 JOHN NAPIER ( 1550-16 17)
John Napier was a
Scottish mathematician
and eighth laird of
Merchiston. He entered
the University of St
Andrews at the age of 13,
but left without a degree.
He is best known as the
inventor of logarithms
and another calculating
device called 'Na pi er's
bones'. He began
working on logarithms around 1594 and
published his treatise, Description of the The TO/if ill Napicrf BQIlt's mrri,'d T11l1lriplimriQII
Marvelous Canon of Logarithms, in 1614. rabies ~bicb mlltlr CtI/CIIlati(lIIs 1nllch sin/pIn; bllr
Na pier's bones comprised a system of small fbI'] did lIor work ill [be Slime /:Jay lIS logtlr-irhms.
rods used for calculating; they were the
forerunner of the slide rule. to use the dot as a decimal point separating
Napier was also an inventor of artillery, the parts of a decimal number - his
and suggest ed to lam es VI of Scotland logarithmic tables are the first document to
something like a tank - a metal chariot with use the decimal point in the modem style.
holes from which small bore shot could be He was ardently anti·Catholic and beli eved
fired. He is known, too, as the first person the Pope to be the anti-Christ.

Tables of logarithms were published Logarithms also offer an easy way of

first in 1620 by the Swiss mathematician
JOOSt Burgi whn discovered logarithms
independently of N apier henveen 1603 and
1611. To usc logs it was necessary first to
look up the logarithms of the numbers to
he multiplied, add them together and finally
to look up the antilogarithm of the answer.
For di\'ision, it was necessary to subtract
one logarithm from the other and then look
up the antilog.
finding powers and rOOts. To find a square,
multiply the logarithm by twO and look up
the antilog; to tind a square rOOt, divide the
log by mo and look up the antilog. To find
a cube, the logarithm is tripled; to find a
cube root, it is di\~ded by three, and SO on.
Children in western schools were taught to
usc rabIes of log'arithms until the latc 20th
ccntury when electronic calculatOrs finally
took OWr the rol e of comple..'o: calculations.
 P UTTING TWO AN D TWO TOGHH U

The development of logari thms made

much else possible. For scientists, the ALL ABOUT e
comple-x ealcularions required, particularly e is a very significant number in
for astronomy, hecame much easier and so mathematics. It is defined (among other
progress in this field speeded up. It didn't methods) as the sum Df all numbers in
take long heton:~ logarithms moved from the series
printed tables to physical calculating 1+1+1+1+1+
devices. The first was the Gunter scale, O! 1! 2! 3! 4!
developed by Englishman Edmund Gunter
in 1620. It was a large plane scale with where n! means n·factorial (n multiplied by
logarithms printed on it. A10ngside a pair of each digit smaller than itself ~ so
compasses, sailors used it to multiply and
divide distances . 4! '" 4 x 3 x 2 xl", 24).
A1though hase-iO logarithms are hardy
used any more (their function has been By convention, O! == 1. SD
taken over by cakulators and computers),
base-e logarithms (natural logarithms; sec
pand) are still widely used in sciellce.
An enduring mechanical cakularor that As it is an unending series, it has an infinite
used logarithms was the slide rule. The first number of digits and is an example of an
slide rule was circular and designed by infinite series.
\Villiam Oughtred around 1632; he made a
rectangular version in 1633. The slide rule
ha.~ decimal numbers Oil one .scale and their
logarithms on another. By lining up the
scales in the right way, it's possihle ro read
off the product of two numbers .

MACHINES FOR MATHS

Charts and tables, and then the slide rule,
offered a grt.-"":lt advantage over carrying out
calculations with paper and pen, hut the
enormous burden of cakulation required hy
emerging science, especially astronomy, by
commerce, finance and navig'ation cried out
for better mechanical aids.
The first commercial attempt at a
cakulating machine was made by Blaise SmiTing ill tbe If/te 17tb crimi/). tbe slide rille
Pascal (see page 43) in 1642- 3 ro help his rl'iglledfor300yefmasrbrkillgofcalelllf/tl)/"S.1r
father, an adminisrra tor in Rouen, France, ll"IJr slIpt'rseded by ,be pocket caleulf/w,' ill 'he 1970s-.
who h:ld ro dea l with
complicated tax figures. The 'It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the
Pascaline, as it was called, labour of calculation which would safely be relegated to
consisted of a OOX containing anyone else if machines were u~ed.'
a series of notched whed~ or Gottfried Leibniz
gears. A complete rotation of
unc wheel advanccd the
adjaccnt wheel one tenth of a rotation. It Leibniz died in poverty. The prnrorypt': of
could only mrryout addition and subtraction, his machine was ignored and lay hidden in
and was not hugdy useful as French currency a.n attic in thl' University of Gottinb'l'n,
at the rime was not dtcimal: there were 12 Germany, until 1879.
dl:lliers to a wI and 20 sols to a livre. ([his is the The 18th Ct':ntul), S:lW a flurry of
same as the system in. use in the UK wltil calculating machines based on the same
1970, which had twelve pt::Ilce to a shilling principles as those of Pascal and Leilmiz,
and twenty shillings to the pound.) but nont': really took offconUllCrcially since
A slightly earlier machine that also used mechanical limitations meant that they
rotating cogs was the Calculating Clock were never qukk and easy to usc.
designed by vVilhclm Schicl...ard (1592-163 5) The first successful calculating machine
in 1623. He made a prowtype, which was was made by Charles Xavier Thomas de
destroyed in a fire, and possibly a second Colmar (1785-1870), in France. Hi s
copy which h:ls never heen found. Schiekarrl Arithmomt':tt' r worked on tht': same
died ofbuhonic plab'1H~ and hi.~ invention was principle as Leibniz's machine and could
lost to histOry. However, he deS(:ribed his c;lrry Out all four arithmetic operation.~
invention in papen; (including letters to the easily. Between 1820 and 1930, 1,500 wert'
aStronomer Johannes Kcpll'r) which were sold and similar devices appe;lred from
discovered in the 10th century, enabling his other manunlcrurers.
machine to be recreated in 1960.
Gottfried Leibniz (sec page 154) TOWARDS A COMPUTER
developed the principle of Pasca l's machine The precursor of the modem computer is
intO a fully functional calculating machine generally considered to be the Analytical
th:\[ could handle addition, subtraction, Engine designed by Charles Babbage
multiplication and division . Like Pascal, (1791-1871). At the time Babbage was
L eihniz W:lS a child prodigy. H e had learned working, complex ealeubtions were carried
Latin by the age of 8 :lnd gained his second Out using tables of figollres, including
doctoral degrel' at 19. Hi s first 'Stcppl'd logarithms, compil ed by people called
Rl'ckoner' prototype was built in Paris in 'computers'. The tabk"S tended to have a lot
1674. It used a central cylinder with a setof of errors - Babbage's aim was to makl' a
rod-shaped teeth of different ll'ngths that machine that could perform calcul :l[ions
extended alon g thl' drum. This turned a without making mist3kes. He began
series of toothed whi:'l'ls. Dl'spite his genius, designing his first such machine, a
 PUT11NG TWO AND TWO TOGHH (R -.I

BLAISE PASCAL (1623-62)

The French mathematician, physicist and
philosopher Blaise Pascal laid the foundation of
probability theory and invented the first digital
calculator. His mother died when he was a small
child and the family moved to Paris, where his father
took on his son's education. Pascal was something of
a prodigy, publishing his first paper on mathematics
at the age of 18. As well as designing his calculating
machine, he worked on pressu re and hydraulics,
formulating Pascal's law of pressure and making a
mercury-filled barom eter. In his thirties, he
underwent an intense religious experience, adopted
the strict moral code of Jansenism and entered the
convent of Port-Royal in 1655, giving up his interest
in mathematics.

Tb~ ParCfllill~ could d~al witb

1II/"lI/b~rY lip ra 9,999,999,
bllr C01l1d ollly b~ llsed for
additioll aud !illbrmctlOIl.
Ir war operared by movillg
tbe dia/r. rb~ solurioll ro rb~

plVblelll tlppettrillg ill rbe

wil/MUls above.

Difference Engine, in 1822 to work Out the

values of polynomial functions (functions COW CATCHER
that contain morc than onc tcnn, such as Babbage also invented
4x! + 5y). The first Differencc Enginc hc the cow-catcher - the
designcd necded around 25,000 parts metal frame attached
weighing a total offiftecn tOlLS (13,600 kg). to the front of trains
It would have stood 2.4 metres (8 fcct) tall. to clear the track of
!-Ic nevcr built it, hur designcd an improved obstacles.
version, Differencc Engine No.2 . Again,
 .P
~ NUMBERS P UT TO W O RI(
/~
'The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic
patterns, just as rhe Jacquard loom weaves
flowers and leaves. '
Ada lovelace
TH E JACQUARD LOOM
The mechanical lacquard loom,
invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard
in France in 1801, uses punched
cards to store a woven pattern and
control the loom to reproduce the
pattern. It was the first piece of
machinery to be controlled by
punched cards and, although it was
entirely mechanical rather than
computerized, it is considered an
important step towards computer
programming.
Difference Ellgille No.2 1J'{1.f [OIlm-IKud by tbe
Scimce /r.1I1felll!l ill Lolldoll ro celebrate rbl' 200rh
flllllwl'mny of Bflbbugl'f bin/;. Ir worked jlrrwlersly.
Bahbage did nOt 1ll00ke it, but it was built to
his design in the Science Museum in
London in 1989- 1991, to the engineering
tolerances of Babhage's time. It produced a
solution accurate ro 31 dibrits at its first triaL
Babbage abandoned plans for the
Difference Enbrine and emba r ked on a more
ambitious project - to design an Analytical
Engine which could accept programmed
instructions on punched cards. Abrain he did
nOt actually build it, but refilled the design
repeatedly. The mathematician Ada
Lovelace read of his design and constructed
 P UTTING TWO AN D TWO TOGHH U

BERNOULU NUMBERS

a 1 2 4 6 10 14
B -I -~
, a !
"
a program to calculate Bernoulli numbers 'rVe have come a long way from
using the Analytical Engine. Bernoulli Babbage's plans for machines that filled a
numbers arc a sequence of positive and room and performed only arithmetic,
negative rational numbers important in though there is some dehate about who
number meoly and analysis (see tahle above). created the very first truc computer.

AUGUSTA ADA KING,

COUNTESS OF LOVELACE ( 181 S-S2)
- 'PRINCESS OF PARALLELOGRAMS'
Augusta Ada King, often known as Ada
Lovelace, was the daughter of the poet
Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke; the
couple separated two months after her
birth. Her mother hoped that instruction in
mathematics might root out any madness
Ada could have inherited from her father
and engaged Augustus De Morgan, first
professor of mathematics at the University
of london, to teach her.
Ada fi rst took an interest in Babbage's
work around 1833. During a nine·month
period in 1842-3, she translated the work
of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on
Babbage's Analytical Engine. Her
instructions for calculating Bemoulli
numbers using the Engine are widely
considered to be the world's first computer
program, even though they were never was caused by over·enthusiastic
actually implemented. Ada worked with bloodletting on the part of doctors trying
Babbage until her prematu re death, which to treat her for cancer of the uterus.
 ~
/ ' NUM8ERS PUT TO WOR k

/~
The Gcrm:m engineer
Konrad Zuse (1910-95) CHIPS WITH EVERVTI-HNG
made the first binary The microchip was first invented in 1952 by a Ministry of
computer, the Z3, in 1941 Defence work er in the UK, Geoffrey Dummer. However,
bur it was only partially the MOD refused to fund development and a patent was
programmable. The first filed in the US by Jack Kilby seven ye ars later.
completely programmable
computer was the Colossus,
designed by Tommy Flowers (J905-9S) for they had ever been built. Stepping into the
the UK Secret Service during the Second gap left by the disowned Colossus, the US
\"'orld War and used to crack the high-level claimed the tlrst computer with the
codes of the German army. The first E1\T[AC designed by John j\lrauchly and J
Colossus went into service in early 1944 and Presper Eckert and completed in \ 946.
ten had been lJUilt by the end of the war. After the war, enormous mainframe
HowL'Ver, most were dcsrroyed at the end of computers were produced for use in
the war and for many years the British industry and hy governmentS and other
government refuscd to acknowledge that large organizations ami the commercial
computer industry was born. These early
computers COH hundreds of thousands of
dollars and worked with punched tapes or
cards. They had no screen or kt.:yboard and
were used largely for scicntific, military
and fin311ci3l applications.

A COMPUTER IN THE HAND .••

Computer5 for everyonc became 3 re3lity
with the development of the microchip in
1958 by Jack Kilby, who worked for Texas
Instruments in the US . A microchip, or
imegr3ted circuit, p3cks 311 the circuitry
required for a complex electrical system on
to a tiny wafer of si licon using etching
tcchnolob'Y' It enabled the miniaturization
of the prc\'iously huge machines used for
calculations.
The microchip led to the introduction
of the first h3ndheld c3lculators in 1970 and
Dt'rpitt' fillillg a room, Colossus bad less pnxemllg then person3l computers. The lntel 4004,
ptr,;;tT rball all iPod. Afrer rbe il'tlIi rbt' Bririsb developed in 1971, W3S the first microchip
gfTvenmlfnr dt"llied ir brld evt'l·l'xifted. to put 311 the functions of 3 computer on a
 PUTTING TWO AN D TWO TOGETHU

single chip, which heralded

the revolution in computer
design. The number o f
instructions that could be
tltted on to a microchip
doubled every year as
manufacturing advanced.
A modern microchip can
hold features .smaller than
mierometre across
"
(one millionth of a merre,
or a thousandth of a
millimetre). M.icrochips arc
everywhere, controlling
our planes, caN and
household appliances
they arc even cheap Tbe cilrllitry QII a lIIiCHXbip is {JJQsTllall (Q see ;]. ,i tb tbe lIaked rye.
enough to put into J\1i17wbips are fVl'IJwbere, CQl/(I"Qllillg lIear!y nil QII/' tecblw!Qgier.
birthday cards that playa
tune when opened. towards quantum computing, making use of
The speed and powcr of computers the sub-atomic properties of matter to store
continues to in crease at an astonishing rate. and manipulate data.
The L'Omputers used to put a man on the Early calculating aids intended to speed
moon in 1969 could be outwitted by a up arithmetic. Computers first did this,
mobile phone today. facilitating bulk calculations, sa\'ing time
Our fastest supercomputers carry out and giving accurate results. ComputeN can
hundreds of trillions of operations a second, deal with exo'cmely complicated tasks as
which is around a million times faster than a long as the tasks can be specified in logical
standa rd desktop computer. A steps. This has provided an impetus for
supercomputer capable of 10 quadrillion advances in IOb';C and its notation, and even
(10 1') operations is expected by 2010. for computers to handle these tasks. Now,
The deman ds we pbce on computers computers are used to manipulate
are ever-increasing, too. Decoding D NA, mathematical expressions in symholic form,
analy"t:ing radiation from outer space for working directly \vith algebraic equations
tell-tall' signs of a deliberate m(..'Ssage and rather than calculating \\.;th numbers fed
rendering digital movies at the highest into equations. For example, the
resolutions still demand hours and days of Schoonschip program, developed by Nobel
dedicated computer tim e. The ncxt physicist Martinus Veltman (born 1931)
generation of L"Omputcrs may leavc silicon handles the alcgebra required for high-
circuitry behind altOgether and move energy physics.
 defective, even, having no
SLICE OF PI real facto~. But there are
The fi rst calculation of n by an electronic computer was duste~ of interesting
made on the ENIAC in 1949. 11 produced 2,037 digits in 70 phenomena around them
hou rs. A simila r program run on a mid.range PC in 2000 and they have become
took one second to achieve the iame result, so ran central to number theory.
approximately 250,000 times as fast as ENIAC.
FIND ING PRIMES
It's easy to find small prime
Special numbers and numbers; we can all do it in our heads.
sequences But tlnding larger primes becomes
People have long been fascinated by the increasingly diffic-ult.
apparently magical abilities of numhe~ to Prim e numher theory attempts to
fall into patterns and to throw up surpri~ing predict the frequency of primes. The
mil'S. Some of these be'came apparent to French maril(:'matician Adrien-Marie
very early mathematicians. These numbers Legendre (1752-1833) showed in 1798 that
were often incorporated into mystical or
religious rituals, buildings and artefacts.
Th e strange properties of numbers arc now
the domain of numher theoristS.

PRIME NUMBER S
Primes are a special class of intebTCrs: they
are numbers which have no factors (cannot
be di\'ided by anything) except themselves
and 1. The primes under 20 are 2, 3, 5, 7,
11, 13, 17 and [9 (1 is usually nOt included).
A~ numhers get largel~ primes become less
frequent, but remain surprisingly common.
Even with numhers around 1,000,000 about
1 in 14 is prime. People have studied prime
numhcn: tor millennia, originally ascribing
some mystical or religious significance to
them. The Greek mathematician Euclid
was the fi~t to prove that there is an
unending sequence of primes around
300ne. Sti ll, more than 2,000 years later, we
have no fornmla for predicting primes. Elldid prrU1nillg his lJ·ork ro Killg ProlelllJ I Sorl'1·
Prime numbers sound as though they ill Ale:mlldl"ia. Tile ilJlI#mlioll is by Lollis Figllifl"
are nothing special - perhaps rather alld dnrfs jivm 1866.
 SP(CIAl NUMBERS ANO SEQU ENCU

THE SIEVE OF ERATOSTHENES

The Ancient Greek mathematician How to sieve p rim es:
Eratosthenes (276- 194BC) developed a 1.Begin by drawing up a square grid
simple algorithm for finding prime containing all the numbers from 1 to your
numbers, called the sieve of Eratosthenes. top limit for primes. Cross out 1 - it's not
a prime.
2 1 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 PRIME NUMBER 2. The first prime is 2; write this at the top of
11 12 11 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 your list. Cross out all multiples of 2.
21 22 21 24 2.S 26 27 28 29 10 3. The next remaining number is the next
11 12 11 14 1S ]6 17 ]8 ]9 40
prim e (3), so write this in the list of prim es.
41 42 41 44 45 46 47 48 49 SO
Cross out all multiples of 3.
51 S2 51 54 S5 56 S7 58 59 60
4. The next remaining number is the next
61 62 6J 64 6S 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 7J 74 7S 76 77 78 79 80 prime (5); write this in the list of primes and
81 82 8] 84 as 86 87 88 89 90 cross out all multiples of 5.
91 92 9] 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 5.Continue to the end of the square. The
101 102101104 lOS 106 107 1011109 110 numbers in the list (and not crossed out in
111 112111114 llS 116117118119110
the square) are the prim es .

• 2145678910 PRIME NUM8ER J ] 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 PRIME NUM8ER

11 11 11 14 15 16 17 18 19 '20 11 12 n 14 IS 16 17 18 19 20
11 11 17 19
21 22 21 24 2.S 26 27 28 29 10 21 22 21 24 2S 26 U 28 29 10 21 29 ]1 17
] 1 11 11 14 ]S 16 ]7 18 ]9 40 11 12 11 14 U ]6 17 18 19 40 41 41 47 51
59 61 67 71
41 42 4] 44 4S 46 47 48 49 SO 41 42 41 44 4S 46 47 48 49 so 71 79 8] 89
SI S2 5] S4 S5 S6 57 58 S9 60 51 52 S] 54 SS 56 S7 S8 59 60 97 101 10] 107
109 111
61 62 61 6 4 6S 66 67 68 69 70 61 62 6] 64 M 66 67 6B 69 70
71 72 7J 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 71 72 7) 74 7S 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 81 84 as 86 87 88 89 90 81 82 81 84 8S 86 87 88 89 \lO
91 92 91 94 9S 96 97 98 99 100 91 92 9] 94 'liS 96 97 98 99 100
101 10210] 104 lOS 106 107 1111109 110 101 102 10] 104 lOS 106 107 1011 109 110
111 112111114115116117118119110 111112111114 llS 116 117118 119 110

the number of primes below or including a approximation becomes vanishingly small.

number x is approximately The chances of a number, x, being a
x/ln(x) prime arc
where In(x) is the namrallogarirhm of x. As l/ln(x).
the size of x increases, the inaccuracy of the This means, for instance, that a number
 ~
/ ' NUM8ERS PUT TO WOR k

/~

ERATOSTHENES ( 276--194Bc)
Eratosthenes was born in libya, but worked
and died in Alexandria (Egypt). A friend of
Archimedes, he was in charge of the library
at Alexandria. Around 250sc he invented the
armillary sphere, a spherical model with
intersecting bands that is used to
demonstrate and predict the
movement of the stars. It was used as
an astronomical instrument
until the 18th century.
Eratosthenes also
developed a system for
measuring longitude
latitude, drev.> a map of the
whole known world and made
the first recorded calculation
of the Earth's circumference
(see panel, page 87: Measuring
the Earth).
The later writer Eusebius
of Caesarea (d.A0339-40)
attributes to Eratosthenes a calculation of
the distance from the Earth to the sun which The Eanb is n>pl"esmred by rbe baH at rbe cmTIT
is accurate to within one per cent of the figure of tbe flrmillary ~bf"n, rbe apparellt O1vits of
now accepted. o/bel" bodies by tbe l"illgr aI"QIlIll/ ir.

around 1,000,000 ha s a chance of about 1 in
13.8 of being prime since the natural
logarithm of 1,000,000 is U.s.
TWIN PRIMES
Twin primcs arc pairs of prilll~ numbers
separated by only 2. Obvious examples are 3
and 5, 5 and 7, II and 13, or 17 and 19. The
twin primes conjecture states that there IS
all infinite number of twin primes. That
s~cms r~asona ble, as it on Iy means they
don't have to run om at some point. Bm it
hasn't heen prown to be true. Therc is also
a 'wcak' twin primes conjecture, which has
been dcmonstratcd. This states that the
number of twin primes below a number x is
approximately given by this horribly
complicated expression:

50
 SP{C IAL NU M SER S ANO UQU ENCU

THE GOLDBACH CONJECTURE

In 1742, the Prussian mathematician Christian
Goldbach wrote a letter to the Swiss
mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler in
which he set out his belief that every integer
greater than 2 can be written as the sum of three
primes. He considered 1 to be a prime, which
mathematicians no longer accept. The conjecture
has since been refi~ed and now states that every
even number greater than 2 can be written as the
sum of two p rimes.
Goldbach could not prove his belief (which is why
it is a conjecture and not a theorem), and no one
has been able to prove it since. it has been verified Th~ll! '1:. 'I1SII" {/ IVCf/( J~{/IIJj'slI/lIl1 rtlll.:
by CDmputer for all numbers up to 1,01 8 (to April ill (be ferrer GQId/!(lch 'i:J1'1)rr (Q Elllet;
2007), but a theoretical proof is still needed. Inn {blll'r hUiJ.1 ir is wir" 1ffillbofloricillllS,

propl'r di\>isors. Thi~ means that if you add

[~
J(logx)' ~ 1.320323631
J~(Iogxi
together all the numhers that the numher
can be divided by, the answer is the number
itself.
For t!Xample
Don't worry about the e,x pression - it 6", 1 +2+3=lx2x3
doesn't matter. VYhat is interesting to think 28", T + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 '" 1 X 2 X 14", 1 X 4 X 7
aOOut is why it exists at all. \\!hat is it about
numbers that makes it possihle ro find an Euclid first proved that the formula 1",1(2"_ 1)
expression like this? Th e number in the gives an even perfect number whenever
middle, 1.310313631, is
called the prime conStant. It
has no other known M1HA1LESC U'S THEOREM
relevance except in this in 1844, Belgian mathematician Eugene Charles Catalan
prediction of twin primes. (1814- 94) conjectured that 2' '" 8 and 3' '" 9 form the only
example of consecutive powers (Le., 2 and 3, with cube
PERFECT NUMBERS and square, 8 and 9), It was finally proven to be the case
Perfect numhers are those by the Romanian mathematician Preda Mih~ilescu in 2002.
which an:' the "''lllll of all their

51
 2n _ I is prime . There arc currently 44 perfect
numben; known, the hight:st of which is o
2 J!.,tIl.b5h x (2 11·SIIl .657 -1). It has 19,616,7 I 4 digits . o 0
000
AMICABLE NUMBERS
Amicable numher.~ comc in p3irs. Thc Six i.~ therefore :I. triangular number. If we
proper divisors of om.' of the pair, added 3dd ~n cxtra row of stoneS at t he bottom, we
together, produce tht: other. The numbers get the next triangular numher, ten:
220 3nd 284 ~re an amicable pair. Tht:
proper divisors of 220 arc 1,2,4,5,10, II, o
20,22,44,55 and 110, which 3dd('d tOgether o 0
make 28+; and the proper divisors of 284 arc 000
1,2,4, 71 and 142, which tOb'Cther make o 000
220. Pythab'Oras' followers studied amieJble
numbers, from around 5OO8C, believing Nine StOnes can be arranged intO :J. s(]uare:
them to have 1l13ny mystical properties.
Thabit ibn Qurrah (836-901), 3 o 0 0
tr3nsbt()r of Greek mnhenutlC31 tc.xt.~, 000
discovered 3 rule for nnding amic3ble 000
numbers. Arab m3them~ricians continued
to study them, Kamal aI-Din Abu'I-H asan The nl!.xt square number has four 011 e3ch
Muh3mmad 31-Farisi (c.1260-1310) side, giving 4! = 16.
discovering thc pair 17,926 and IH,416 and
Muhammad B3qir Y.1Zdi nnJing 9,363,584 Some numbers, such as 36, 3re both
and 9,437,056 in the 17th century. triangular 3nd squ3rl':

POLYGONAL NUMBERS 000000

Some numhers of dot.~. Stones, seeds or 000000
000000
other objcct.~ can be. arr3ngeJ into regular 000000
polygons. For example, six stonl!.~ can be 000000
3rranged into 3 perfectly regular triangle. 000000

o
00
000
'Six i5 a number petfeet in itself, and not
0000
because God created all things in six days; 00000
rather, the converse is true. God created all 000000
0000000
rhing5 in six da~ becau5e the number is
00000000
perfect.'
StAugustine (AD354 -430), The City of God P()lygon~1 numbers 3rc increased by
incremcnting each side by onl' extra unit.

52
 SP(CIAl NUMBERS AN O UQU(NCU

TRIAN GU LAR NUMBERS

[ 3 6 [0
• o o o
•• o 0 o 0

••• o 00

••••
SQUARE NUMBERS
[ 4 9 [6
• 0
• 0 0 • 0 0 0
•
•• 0 0 • 0 0 0
•
••• 0 0 0 •
••••
PolYb"Onal numbers have been studied since AI/Ionio Galldl iliaR-pmlTl'li fJ1!IIlgic SqIllD? ill th~
the time of Pyt hagoras and were often used Ciltlxt/ral rf dx Sllgmdll Fllmlfi" iI/Btl/TrlOI/a. TIx 1II11gir
as the basis of arranb>ementS for talismans. IIImm- is 33, th~ YIIPfX1.w ~~ rfChrist at his deatll.

Notice how the prc\'ious triangubr or

square number is incremented to form the it) has three squares on each side and the
next in the series. magic constant is 15:

TRIANGULAR SQUARE
NUMBERS NUMBERS 2 7 6 15
1 1
3 (= 1+2) 4 (= 1+3) 9 5 1 15
6 (= 3+3) 9(=4+5 )
10 (: 6+4) 16(=9+7) 4 3 8 15
15 (= 10+5 ) 25 (= 16+9)
21 (= 15+6) 36 (= 25+11)
28 ('" 21 +7) 49 (= 36+13) 15 15 15 15 15

This IS known as the Lo Shu sguare

MAGI C SQUARES
A magic square is an arrangement of
numbers in a square grid so that each
horizontal, vertical and diagonal line of
numbers adds lip to the same total, ca lled
the mabric constant. The small est magic
square (apart from a box with the figure 1 in
after a Chinese legend recorded as early as
650BC This tells how \,illagcrs tried to
appease the spirit of the flooding rivcr Lo
and a turtle came our of the watcr with
markings on its back that depicted the
magic square. The people were able to use
the pattern to control the river.
 Magic squares have been known for
arowld 4,000 years. Th!..')' are recorded in
ancient Eb'YPt and Lldia and have. been
attributed with special powers by cultures
around the world. The first known magic
squares with fin' and six numbers on L'11ch
side arc described in an Arab [ext, the RflJa 'il
Ib~"Wml fll-S(/fo (E1lt),dopedia of tbe Brefbrt'll of
Pllrity), written in Baghdad around 983.
The tirst European to write about magic
squares was the Greek Byzantine scholar
Manuel .M oschopoulos, in 1300.
The Italian mathematician LUL-a Pacinli,
who recorded the system of double-cuny
book-keeping in 1494, collected and smdied
Illabrie squares. (He also compiled a treatise
on numher puzzles and magic that lay
undiscovered in the archives of the
University of Bologna until it was published
in 2008.)
PI
A~ well as numbers that foml series or
pattems, there are several strange and
significant single numbers. The fir.~t to he
discm'ercd W;lS pi, n . This ddines the ratio
of a cirde's diameter to its cireum ference, ~o
that the circumference is
nd
where d is the diame.ter. Th e. vJlue of rr
is a decimal number with an infinite
number of digits after the decimal poinL It
IH.'gins 3.14159 (which is a good enough
approximation for most purposes).
That the ratio ofthe diameter of a circle
to irs circumference is always the same has
been known for SO long that iL~ oribrins can't
be traced. The Eb'YPtian Ames Papyrus,
c.l650BC, uses a value. of 4 X (819f = 3.16
for 11". In the Bible, measurements relating
to the building and cLJuipping of the temple
of Solomon, c. t)50nc, use a value of 3 for 1L
The first theoretical calculation seems
to h:tve been carried Out by Archimedes of
Syracuse (287-212nc). He obtained the
approximation
He knew thar he did not ha vc an. accurate
value, but the average of his twO bounJs is
3.1418, an error of a bout 0.0001.
Later mathematicians have refined
the approximation by discovering: more
decimal places.
e
Another strange and very significant
number is e. The value of c was first
discovered by Jakoh Bernoull i, who tried to
discover the value of the expression
lilll
• ""
(I . . 1)'
II
while working on calculating compound
interest. \-Vhen evaluated, t he. expression
gives th e series that defines e..
The tI.rst known use of the eon Stant,
represented by the letter Il, is in letters from
Gottfried Leibniz to Christi:lan Huygcns
written in 1690 and 1691. Leonhard Euler
was the first to use the letter e for it in 1727,
~nd the fir.') t published use of e was in 1736.
He possibly chose I.' as it is the first letter of
the. word 'exponential'.
I.' has an infinite. numher of digiL~ after
the decimal place, as it is defined (among
 SP{ CIAl NU M 8[RS ANO UQUENCU

othcr methods) as the sum of allnumbcrs in en ,+ T '" O.

an infinite series - see panel. page 41,
This, known as Euler's identity, is a
UNREAl! special case of a rule which rdates complex
The imaginary number, i, is detined as the numbers and trigonometri c functions.
square root of minus 1.
The term imaginary numher was used by
the French philosopher and mathematician
Rent! Descartes (1596-1650) as a derogatory
term, but now mcans a numher that involves
the imaginary square rOOt of -I :

(A negative number t::J.n't 'really' have a

square rOOt as when a number is squared,
whether it is positive or negative to Start
with, it always gives a positive result.)
A complex numher z is defined as

z'" x + iy

where x and y afe ordinary numben:.

Imaginary and complex numbers were
encountered first in the 16th cenrury by
Gerolamo Cardano and Niccolo Tartaglia
while investigating the roots of cubic and
quartic equations, and were first described
by Rafael Bombelli in 1572.
H owever, even negative numbers were
distrusted at the time, so people had littl e
time for imaginary numbers. It was in the
18th century that it began to he taken more
seriously. It was brought to thc attention of
mathematicians properly by Carl Friedrich
Gauss in 1832.
Strangely, the special numhers come
together in the expression which has been Tb .. Grnk ffltllbcmoridllll Pyrhogol'llrdl'1noll#rarrs
call ed the most startling in the whole of bir rb..o/'~m 1)1/ dgbr'llIIg'.-d "'71l11ghs by dl'tr;1'illg
mathem:uics: 1)1/ rbt grolmd,
 ,;S-/ '1 NUM 8 US PUT TO WO Rt(
1'/
Unspeakable numbers
The t'oncept of banning a number may
seem bizarre, but it has happened for
millennia and still happens even tOday.
Some numbers havl' been considered just
too difficult or dangerous to countenance
and havl' been outlawed by rulers or
mathematicians. But a lwnned number
dOCiin't go away, it just goes underground
for a while.
PYTHAGORAS' NUMBER PURGE
The ancient Greek mathematician
Pythagoras did not recognize irrational
numhers and banned consideration of
negative numhers in his School. (An
irrational numher: is one that eannot be
expressed as a ratio of whole numbers; so
0.75 is a rational numher as it is ;/. hut j"( is
irrational.) Pythagoras had to aclmowledb't!
that his ban caused problems. His theorem,
which finds the 1t~nbrt.h of a side in a right-
angled triangle from the lengths of the
other two sides, insrantly runs into
problems if only rational numbers are
recognized. The length of the hypotenu~
(longt!st side) of a right-angled triangle with
two sides one unit long is the square rOOt of
two - an irrational number ("" 1.414).
Pythagoras was una hIe to prove by logic
that irrational numbers did not exist,
hut when H ippasus of Metapontum (born
(.500Be) demonstrated that the square root
of 2 is irrational and argued for their
existence, it is sai d that Pythagoras had hi m
56
'It is rightly disputed whether irrational
numbers are true numbers or false. Because
in studying geometrical figures, where
rational numbetJ desert us, irrationals take
their place, and show predsefy what rational
numbers are unable to show.. we Gre
moved and compel/ed to admit that they
are correct ..
Michael Stifel, German mathemat ician
(1487-1 567)
drowned. According to legend, Hippasus
demonstrated his discovery on board ship,
which turned out to have been unwise and
the Pythagoreans thre<.v him overboard.
P),thagoras' ban was b ased nn his
aesthetic and philosophical objection to the
existence of irrational numhers. Later
censors have had political, economic and
social reasons for trying to outlaw certlin
numbers or catebrories of number.
ARABS v. ROMANS
There was conside.rable resistance to the
introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals in
Europe in the Middle Ages . The ease with
which arithmetic could he carried out with
the new number system made. it attractive.
As Hindu-Arabic numbers threatened to
democrati ze numeracy they were
demonized by those who had an interest in
restricting numerncy and retaining it as a
special tool of the dite. If mathematics were
opl'ned up to everyone, a source of power
would be lost. The Catholic Church wanted
to kl'ep control of l'ducation by maintaining
its holJ on numbers, and in addition
opposed the. sysw m from the Islamic world
 UNS P [AKA6 l£ NU M 8t R~
,

on religious grounds. MathemOlticians who

practised the arcane systems of mathematics
using an Olba(:us were protected by the
Church. So strong was the opposition to the
popularizatio n of Hindu-Arab numerals
that, it is said, some poor souls were even
burned at the smke as heretics for usin g
them. However, merchant~ and accountant~
wanted to usc the new system as it made
their tasks easier. The battle between the
algoristS - those who u.scd algorithms, or
calculating methods, with Hindu-Arabic
numerals - and the abacists - who used an
abacus and Roman numerals - raged for
ccnmries. The emergence of printing in
Europe eventually contributed to the
domin:mce of the Hindu-Arabie syStem.
Dissemination o f Olrithmetical methods LIIlly Arithmenc TI")eet:; rbe flb'Klts fol"
became easy and it was no longer possible to Nil/till-Am" IIl1mr/"a!s ill rbe MargJri[J
runtain the flow of numbers. Philosophic:! by Gl7f,OrillS ReisTb, J503.
Ewnmall y, of course, the cs tabli~hment
buckled under pressure and the number THE SECRET OF ZERO
system we usc now triumphed. But Roman The names for 'zero' in use at the
numerals and the abacus continued to be time when Hindu·Arabic numbers
used in some areas of life for many yea rs. were banned in Europe were dIm,
The French were the first to release chifre, tziphm and so on. These
themselves from the tyranny of the abacus. names came to stand fo r the whole
After th e French Revolution (1 789), there number system that included zero.
was a complete reversal and use of the As the system was u sed secretly, the
abacus wa~, in mrn, banned in schools and name also came to mean a code or
government offices . secret and developed into the word
'ci pher'.
666 - THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
Many religions depend he3vily on number
sy mbolism and me speci31 numerical
methods for discoverin g or conce3ling to 36 3re armnged so th3t the rows, columns
secretS. In th e early ye3rs of Christianity, 3nd di3gonals add up to 111. The sum of all
the Romans were using as a talism3n the numbers from I to 36 is 666. The Church
Magic Squ3re of the Sun. [n this lmgic banned the po5.'icssion of the magic square
square of six by six numbers, the numbers 1 because in Christianity 666 is the N umber

57
 -P
/ 1 NUM8ERS PUT TO WOR k

///
666l)'lIIboliurtbemdoJ NOTO NEGATIVES
tbe1l'{JrldforChristifills, In Renaissance Europe, negative numbers
bllt ill Cbtl/ere [I/Itlll"l' it were not recognized. Solutions to
is amsidl'lYdIlIcky. mathematical problems that included
negative numbers were ofren disregarded.
Evt!1l though early Chinese and Indian
mathematicians had explained the U~ of
of the Beast, thought to he the enemy of nCbr;nivc numbers, u~ually by relating them to
God identified in the Book of Revelation. economic debt, later mathematicians in
Possession of the magic square became Europe strub'gled with them. Michael Scifel
punishable by deat h. (sec panel, page 56) called numbers less than

ill fbI' UallflllTllell Sqlllll"e 1I1t1SfIl{11' 011 4 Jilin 1989. It if illegal to lise
Sevaal thol/Sf/lld people were killed
o
rbe dnre of rbe masmcre as II PIN m code ill Cbillilo

58

zero 'absurd numhers', for =mplc. The French
mathematician Albert Girard (1595-1632)
was probably the first major academic fully to
accept negative numbers in solutions, but it
took until the early 19th century for a proper
foundation for arithmetic with negative
numbers to be .set out.
DANGEROUS DIGITS
666 is nOt the only specific number to have
been demonized. In China it is illeg';!l to usc
the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre
(8964,4 June L989) as a password or PIN or
in any other form that might link it with the
event (rather than as the ncxt number in the
natural sequence of counting).
Ll the US, there is a hexadecimal (32-
digit) number which has acquired the status
of ' ill egal number'. 1t is the key to
encrypting high-definition DVDs, and its
publication is technically illegal (since by
using the hy with the appropriate
mechanism it would be possible to
unencrypt the DVDs). The AACS
(Advanced Access Content System) claims
that it is a copyright circumvention device -
possession of a copyright circumvention
device I S III brcach of the Digital
lvlillennium Copyright Act (US, 1998).
H owever, within a short time of its being
revealed, the 'secret' number was Jlublished
on 300,000 web sites; attempts to remove it
from the public domain were dearly b,'Uing
to be fruitless.
The AACS also claims to own many
other numbers used for encryption but
won't say what they arc (as their usefulness
depends on them being secret). The only
'special' feature of these numbers is that
they arc nOt at all special, but arc g'Cnerated
UNS PEAKA8 U NUM81RS
random numbers. There is,
understandably, considerahle n:sisrance to
the notion that anyone can 'own' a number
and prevent others knowing or using it.
Computer enthusiasts rushed to lay claim to
their ovm numbers that they could tell
everyone else nOt to use in retaliation and
mockery of the AACS. So we can stop now.
No more numbers can be used in this book
as someone else owns them all!
MOVING ON
Examining numbers and their properties is
all very interesting, and was b'U()(] enough
for the Ancient Greeks (who disdained
applicati ons of mathematics), lmt for most
people the value of mathematic'S li es larbrcly
in its usefulness. Num hers all ow us to
measure, count, make things, run
economies and examine the universe around
us. [n truth, they are the kc'Y to all of science
and a lot of art and h3ve played a key role
in every ci\'ilization.
NII'II/berr ,·Ide (/lid define rbe wmid's economies,
nlld ill impnct all till Ol/l·acrivitief.
59
CHAPTER 3

THE SHAPE
of things

Not everything can be counted. A herd of catt1e

contains a countable number; even a field
contains a number of blades of grass that could,
theoretically, be counted. But some things can
only be measured - we can't count how much
water is in a IlOnd or the distance between the
hill and the sea, yet it is useful to be able to
quantify them.
Geometry - working with distances, areas
and volumes in the real world - was one of the
earliest applications of mathematics. (The
word is derived from geQ, ' earth' and metro/I,
' measure' in Greek.)
It is likely that some of the first
calculations ever carried out related to
building monwnenrs, marking out land or
making artefacts for religious purposes.
A first necessary step was to develop units
of measure, in itself a major conceprualleap
from counting. Measuring makes an artificial
distinction, dividing something continuous into
nominal units.

Tix Gold RtlSb prodllCt'd gold ro b~ w~igbed. Ilor coills to b~ cOllllt~d.

 TIn SH APE O f THI NGS

The measure of everything

Measuring is essential as soon as a society
starts to enclose and own land, or to trade in
anything but the mOst basic objects, or to
start building any hut the simplest
stmctures. Early ci\~lizations needed to he
able to lllea:mre distances, areas, volullles
and time. Some thinb'"S that could be
counted, such as grains of wheat, are more
easily measured by volume, tOo. But units of
measure didn't develop methodically. The
jumhled mix of mea~ures still in use in the
UK and the US is the legacy of earlier
systems orib~nating in Ancient Babylon,
Eb'YPt and the Roman Empire with later
Scandinavian, Celtic, Germanic and Arab-
influenced systems.

AT ARM 'S LENGTH

Most of the earliest measurement systems,
from China to pre-Columhian America,
were based on dimensions of the human
hody or common objects, such as brrains of A tldly 711f1l/ ill all EJ/glish bop fold: picJ.1'I"S';Jel"~
wheat. Americans (and older British people) paid by tbe bllYbd (a me/JSI/remmt of roll/we) alld
still measure short distances in feet, and a nceiVffi half" tnlly stick by ,""/ly of naipt.
grain is scill used as a unit of wcight. (It is
the weight of a brrain of harley, and has precious metals and stones. The caroh has
remained constant for over 1,000 years.) seeds that are remarkably uniform in
The measure of ~,'old and gemstones, the weight, making it ideal for measuring vcry
carat, has irs origins in the caroh seeds used valuable commodities .
originally hy Arah jewellers to weigh The c"Ubit, the unit of length familiar
from the Old Testament in
which Noah measured his
AHEAD Of THEIR TIME ark, was an Egyptian
The inhabitants of the Indus Valley were amongst the first measure equal to the
to produce a unified system of weights and measures and distance from the elhow to
coul d measu re dist ance, mass and time with great the fingertips. It was
precision. Their smallest measure, at 1. 7 mm, is the finest subdivided into other units
known from Bronze Age civilizations. that also related to parts of
the hody:

62
 THE MEASU RE O f EV ERYT HI NG

cubit == 28 digits
(a digit is a finger-
width)
4 digits", 1 palm
5 digits == 1 hand
12 digits", 1 small
span
~ FLEMISH ELL ~

~ CUBIT ~ c:
0(

ENCLISH Ell
•
.
14 digits", 1 large
• FRENCH Ell
•
span
• FAT HOM
•
Bu t the human body
comes in all shapes
and sizes, so one
•
person's 'hand' may
be another's 'palm'. • •
To overcome the
obvious difficulties
and potential for
dispute, standard
measures were
needed. The cubit Tlx biswricnlllllits as Sbl1WII ill chis [ Uollll1do's Virnn~an M.an.
sticks used in Egypt
were all copied from a royal standard made measured in furlongs (or stade), leagues and
of black gran irc and mea.~uring 524 mm miles. A furlong was an t:!ighth of a mile, a
(20.62 inches). The system successfully mile was 5,000 feet and a league was 7,500
imposed uniformity. The Great Pyramid at feet. These measures, along with the
Giza is built on a square hase 440 by 440 Roman measures for weight based on
cubits with variation of no more than 0.05 pounds and ounces, spread through Europe
per cent on any side - making it accurJte to and, hundreds of years later, were carried
115 mm in 230.5 metres. around the world.

ROMAN FEET BIG FEET AND SMALL FEET

The foot divided into twelve inches
originated with the Romans, though their
foot was probably equivalent to 11.65
modern inches, or 296 mm. (There is some
variation in the Roman foot, which appears
to be deliberate bur has never been fully
explain ed.) They also had a palm, which was
a quarter of a foot. Larger distances were
During the centuries after the fall of Rome,
measures developed and proliferated
around Europe, bur there was no
unifomlity. The length of a foot or the
weight of a pound varied from place to place
and sometimes according to what was being
measured. So a gallon of wine contained
231 cubic inches, hut a gallon of ale was 282

63
TH£ SHAPE O f THINGS

DEFINING THE PITCH OF A PITCHER

Chinese weights and measures developed
independently of those in the West and the
Middle East. The system was unique in
incorporating acoustics in its standards. The
standard vessel for measuring volumes of wine
or grain was defined by the weight it could
hold, its shape and the pitch of the sound it
made when struck. Two vessels of the iame
shape, material and weight will only make
the same sound if they hold equal volumes.
The same word in Chinese is used for 'wine
bowl', 'grain measure' and 'bell'.

Cbillil is going lIIen·if liS tm de

illcreilSes ,rirb rhe rest of rbe
world, bllt rbe old lJ'eigbts IIlId
measures sysrn ll persists ill
mllcb I!f tbe (1XIIltl)'.

cubic inch es. (Th e first, known as the
Queen Anne brallon, is still the standard
gallon in the US, though in th e UK the
gallon was redefin ed in 1824.)
Standardization came slowly, progressed
by separJte legislative acts in different
countries. In the US, the older En gli sh
units survived after the UK had redefin ed
th em, resulting in the discrepancy between
US custOmary and UK imperial units today.
WEIGHTS AND MONEY
It's no coincidence that the pound was both
the unit of weight and o f currencr in the
UK for many centuries. VYhen coins were
made from preci ous metal s, th eir weight

'Uniformity of weights and measures, permanent, universal uniformity,

adapted to the nature of things, to the physical organization and to the
moral improvement of man, would be a blessing of such transcendent
magnitude, that, if there existed upon earth a combination of power and
will, adequate to accomplish the result by the energy of a single act, the
being who should exercise it would be among the greatest of benefactors
of the human race. '
John Quincy Adams, American Secretary of State, 1821

The IWnmll5 illtrodured thr poUIld, 'which har rilll:/! hem
tkdlllali~d and /lUly SO/I/~ day give u'ay ro the Ellrv .
was important, since weight and value were
equivalent.
The Hebrew shekel was perhaps the
earlit!.~t mea~1.lrc used for money and weight,
and the Romans introduced the pOllnd,
which was then used in Europe for the next
1,000 years. Ln 1266 Henry III fixed the
weight of a penny at 32 b'Tains of wheat, with
A NEAR MIS S
An identical metric system to
eventually introduced in France
proposed in T668 by Bishop John Wilkins, a
founder of the Royal Society in England. In
a long book on the p ossibility of an
international language, he proposed an
integrated system of measurement based
on a decimal system and almost identical to
the modern metric syst em. His unit of
measurement was 997 millimetre.<> - almost
exactly a metre. The unit of volume was the
equivalent of the litre. Wilkins' proposed
system was never promoted and wen t
largely ignored until rediscovered
Australia n researcher Pat Naughtin in 2007.
THE MEASU RE O f EVERYT HI NG
twenty pennil!S making an ounce and twelve
OUllC!;'S to the pound. Eight pounds was the
weight of a gallon of winc. Although the
twelve and twenty switched places in thc
monemry system, with twelv!;' pence to th('
shilling and twenty shillillgs to the pound,
the equivalent of 240 pellct' to the pound -
both sterling and avoirdupois - was
established. The shilling has gone and the
currency has been re\'ised, bur the leg·acy of
the Roman pound and penny still survives in
the British monetary system (though the
Euro will probably replace them soon).
' FOR ALL PEOPLE, FOR ALL TIME'
The scientific community worldwide now
llses SI uni ts (SystNue Inte111ntiOlla/ d'Unitis)
the seven standard metric units (gram,
metre, Keh<in, ampere, candela, mole
that
was
by
 THE SHAP E O f TH INGS

1670, hut it took anoth er 120 years before

STAR QUALITY OR 'MAD AS A BADGER'?
Numbered scales can be
qualitative comparisons. The star rating
commonly used to grade hotels is a familia r
and universal example of a qualitative scale.
The b ad ger ra ting for deg rees of
eccentricity used in parts of southern
England is a localized system. Many
websites invite users to rate preferences and
experiences numerically. There is a whole
science of evaluating the effectiveness of
such rating systems .
and second). The metric system was first
developed in 18t h-century France. The
need for a simpler, unifi ed and standard
system of measures was pointed Out by th e
anything was done to provide it.
used fo r [n 1790, Charl es-Maurice de TallyrJlld
set the ball rolling ag'ain and the French
Academy of Sciences recommended that a
team detcrmine the distance from the North
Pole w the Equator, guing through Paris.
The first stage was to meas ure the
distance on the meridian from
Dunkirk in northern France to
Barcelona in Spain. The day
after King Loui s }.'v r gave hi s
approval , he was imprisoned by
the French Revolutionary rulers.
As a result, it was an oth er year
before the expediti on started
LOltir X VI grrve hir permirriliJl
fur the expeditif»l -he U'fIS

vicar and mathemati cian Gabri el Mouton in gllillotilled five II/(JI/thr Inter.

A TlMEliNE Of WEIGHTS' AND MEASURE

12 IS
An English n~tin nni 1352
c.800 st~ n d"td for weightl; Ed "·~rd m or
c.30008C I-Inly Rmll:1n ami rn ~"su res is Engh nd 1588
Egypti:Jnsd~\~ lop Em p"ror agreed ~nd ell.l'hrined e ..r:ahll>hes th~ t New standard..
~ll)Val smn d"rd Ch" dema PI" in th" Magru Cm:.. , (XI" Stone C<1" als issu<;>::! hy
f';' t heir basic (r.i68-S H ) tri~s w the charr~r gr~nted by H IXllmili. , ,·,,-Iue Eliz"beth I
measure of regulntc w"ighrs anJ King J oh n th ot rem"in.~tn in Eng land
I"ngth , th~ l'UlJit rnell5ures (1 199-12 16) th is Jay (r. 1558--1603)

r.220 11C
The Ii ~t ('"11 i nese
Emperor, Shi I-luan g OJ
(r.121-109l1 10oc)
standard izes all weightl;
and measu re<;, "wn
spai l}'ing th~ precise axle
len¥rh to be used o n carLS
-- -
%0 02 66 1496
The fi rst king of all I-I~ nry
m Ii.us th~ New St,:mdllr<is fo r
Engl~nd, King Edgar relationship between weights and
(".957J!7S), dl'Cn:.-eS 1110n(1' ~nd weig:ht in m(-.ISlJtCs l<;SlJOO
tho t weif,<hrs and Eng lish curren,")" making in England
m~~SlJres mlJ,~t a(~~!tI1 one penny the weight o f
with a SCln<iHd kept 32 grains o f wh~~ t ~nd
in London 240 pcnc~ t<.> the p<luntl

66
 TH E MEA SU RE O F EV ERYT HI NG

A map of the
herwfIIs
from the
H annonia
lvlarnx:osmica
Atlas by
Cellmills
(1660).

1824
Re<lefinition o f
1790 weights and measureS
George \Va~hington's fi r;t ill the UK, taking into
mes>;agc to Congress a~"COUnt for the fi r;t
1670 St~teS the nee<1 for time the mndirions in
GHlxiel Mouton 'uni formity in ~"Ufren<.y, which 'Iuantiti"" are to
proposes a metric weigh.,; and measur",,'; be weighed and 1878
,,}Stem o f weigh.,; lAngr""s retains the measured in The yml is
and meaSur"" English weigh.,; and e\rnblishing the redcfin("(1 in
in France measures system standards the UK

166' 1707 1799 1866 I %()

John \\r,lkins A gallon of wine is fIXed Ht Standards of The M!-1:ric Act New Systol1e /"te""II;o",,1
proposes a 231 eubic inches. The the metric allows the use o f d'U,,;tis (lnrernati ona I
unive"",1 Ilwtric measure had been us<:<1 s},;tern are the metric System of Units Or SI)
system o f weight., sill~"c the time o f Edw~rd I defined in s}stem in the US fonllul.at("(1 in Paris,
and measures (r.12 7 2- 1307), but the act Paris, Fran~"C Fran~"C at the II th
in England of 170i fi xed the size General Con feren~"C o n
\\'eigh.,; and Aleasures

67
 TIn SHAPE O f T HI NG S
and even then it was beset with dift-lcultics.
\Var in france and Spain SO hi.ndered the
project that it took six years to complete the
journey. But in 1799 the metric ~ystem was
formalized with twO new uniLS of measure,
intended to be universal and enduring.
The metrc was defined a~ 'one ten-
millionth part of a meridional quadrant of
the Earth'; the gram was the mass of a cubic
centimetre of pure water at 4°C (the
SillY NUMBERS?
Calculating with the 1,760 yards in a mile,
the 16 ounces in a pound or the 160
square rods that make an acre has
been the bane of many a schoolchild's life.
The metric system looks simpler, based on
multiples of ten and with
relationships between measu res
different quantities. But the 51 units have
some even more bizarre defining
numbers. A metre is now the distance
68
temperarure at which iL~ density is b'n:atcst).
A platinum cylinder, the Kilogram of the
Archives, became the standard for the
kilogram (1,000 grams).
The kilogram standard is now made of
platinum-iridium alloy kept in ScYres,
nCar Paris; the kilogram i~ the only basc unit
still defined by a physical object. AttemptS
to find a better wayof defini ng the kilogram
are ongoing.
travelled by light in a vacuum in
1/299,792,458 of a second. And a second
is the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of
the radiation associated with a specific
change in energy level of an atom of the
clear isotope caesium·133.
of
III 1793 a mml' was defilled (IS 11/0,000,000
of the distallce fiwlI tbe Pole to the 0jllarOJ~
IIcr.lJ its defilled by rhe speed ofligbr.

STONEHENGE
Stonehenge is a vast arrangement of
concentric circles of stone and holes that
were perhaps intended to hold posts or
other stones near Salisbury in Will.5hire,
England. The remains of the monument,
built in three phases over a period of around
1,000 years between 3000 and 2oo0BC,
consist of huge standing stones, some
surmounted by stone lintels. The
arrangement shows an ability to work with
circles in space, and the curved lintel stones
Stonehenge if flfllrly
/JS old as fbe PJrtnllids
{ou a mil/III!/" l"role.
If, roo, <J'lts bllilf
;rlrb a sopbisricnted
lillriersrrllldillg of
gwml'fry alld Ibe
·/I/OVnllnll of rbe filii .
Early geometry
Geometry deals with dist:J.nces and angles,
with lines, areH and volumes. In its simplest
and earliest forms, it works with lines and
linear shapes in a flat plane. But &om this it
has been extended to dealin g with c"Urvcd
lines in three-dimensional spacc and
cyen to curved spaces in more
dimensions tha t help US to explain the
very fabric of the universe. On the way,
Some of rbe ell/·lint deco1"tlted objrcts /JrlVr
S')"mllen·ica/ paftf'J"lIs.
EARLY G EOMETRY
demonstrate an understanding of arcs of a
circle ~ when all were in place, the lintel
stones would have formed a true circle, not
il series of straight stones. The only tools
available to the builders were picks made of
deer antlers and stone hammers, yet they
were able to Gllculate and measure portions
of a circle and distances. The northeast axis
aligns with the position of the rising sun at
the summer solstice, suggesting that some
form of Gllenda r had been developed.
it has f,';ven us architccture, aStronom~',
optics, perspective, l~Jrtography, ballistics
and much more.
PATTERN AND SYMMETRY: THE
ESSENCE OF GEOMETRY
The earliest engagement with
geometry predates written number
systems. Many early peoples have left
evidence of their interest in repeated
patterns, symmetries and shape in the
fornl of geometric patterns decorating
their objects, structures and dwellings.
69
TH( SHAPE O f THINGS
Some of these date from 25,OOOnc. Early
structures built or aligned with considera ble
precision are further testimony to our
ancestors' b'Tasp of some simple form of
geometry.
PROBLEMS WITH LAND
Practical problems of geometry must
have been tackled in building projects
long before tht..}' were
recorded III written
form. The Sumerians,
the Babylonians and
the Egyptians became
quite adept at working
with the geometry
f/fI'odorus
(c.484-425BC) has
bem dern"ibed as
'the Fflther of
Nisrory'.
Tbe flllI/llfI/ flooding of the Nile, which <'rami
bOlllldfllJ nTflrJ:s, ilXIS olle of tbe pmmplY to tb(
droelopmmt ofnTathemfltics in Anciellt l:.gypr.
of two-dimensional shapes and three-
dimensional objects, calculating distances,
areas and volumes. Documents from around
3100BC reveal that the Egyptians and
Babylonians already had some mathematical
rules for mt..'asuring storage containers,
surveying land and planning buildings. The
Great Pyramid at Giza \vas constructed
around 1650BC, demonstrating that the
Eb'Ylltians already had a good grasp of
geometry.
According to the Greek historian
H erodotus, the Eb'YPrians needed to be able
to calculate areas because the seasonal
floodin g of the Nile swept away property
boundaries. They needed henchmarks and
surveying techniques to restore them
properly. Egyptian geometers were
sometimes referred to as 'rope-stretchers'
after their way of measuring and marking
Out distances and shapes using ropes. The
 EARLY G EOMETRY

STRANGE GEOMETRIES
Enormous geometric patterns drawn in the
Nazca Desert, Peru resolve into glyphs when seen
from the air. They were treated by the Nazca
culture between 200Be and AD6OO. There are 70
individual figures, ranging in complexity from
simple lines and geometric shapes to stylized
animals, plants and trees. Their significance is
unknown, b ut their construction is evidence of
some considerable skill with geometry among a
people about whom we know little.

The uny Iby climate o/tbe Nazca Desn7 bas be/prd

to prem-'i'e tbe girlllt geometric parnrlls dr/r'';)11 all [be
/fwd amlllld 2,000 ),em'Y ago.

same technique no doubt served just as well arithmetic, albochra, b"Cometry as well as
to mark ground plans for building projects weights and measures. The problems arc all
as to reclaim land that had been flood ed . given a strictly practical presentation; for
exam pl e, one asks 'a round field has
WRITING IT DOWN diameter 9 khcr. \Vhat is its area?' The so-
The earliest known m:uhematical called Moscow papyrus from
document I S the Ahmes the same date includ es
papyrus (sometimes called instructions for working our
the Rhind papyrus) from th e volume of part of a
Eb'YPr. It was written by the pyramid.
scribe Ahmes around 1650BC, Because the Eb'Yptians
copying from an older text wrOte 011 papyrus, which is
written about 100 years fra gil e, littl e of their
pre,~ously which itself may mathematical writing su r.~ves.
have contained much older The people of l\tt csoporamia,
material. It is a papyrus scroll
33cm tall by over 5 metri..'S Tbis Bary/ollillli cia)' tablet
long ( 1 foot by 18 feet). It jeawl'illg a problem ill geolllrny
presents 84 mathematical is alVl/lld 4,000 )'MI"f old.
problems, covering topi'-'S in

71
 THE SH APt O f T HI NCi
th e fertil e hasin drained by the Tigris an d
Euphrates, wrote instead on clay uhl ets
which th ey haked. These are much more
enduring and over IOO,lX10 survive. A seri es
o f Babylonian day tabl etS datin g from
1800- 1650BC shows methods for cal (."Ulating
th e hypotenuse of a right-angled rriangle
usin g what we now call Pythagora s'
theorem, and for working with the areas
o f rectangle ~ , triangles ~nd circles. One
probl em, for instan ce, asks about the
di smn ce th e foot o f a l::tdder moves if the top,
leanin g against a wall, slips down. Tbey
include an apprnximation for the square roOt
of 1 wbich is accurate tn five decimal places.
The positional number sy.;tem used hy the
Babylonians was better sui red to all kinds of
calmlation than the Egyptian ~y ste m -
th ough it is hard to say whether an intercst
in numbers prompted the development of
th e hener !>y~tl.' m Qr resulted fro m it.
U nlike the Egyptians, th e B~bylonians
.~ eem to have had a concept of general
principles - that .~o m e mathemati cal
st~t e m e n tS will always he tru l' in any
situation of a given type. For exampl e, one
clay tablet shows the ratio of the sides to th e
dia gonal of a square. Babylonian
mathematicians had derived th e ratio 1: J2,
th e impli cati on bein g that it is possible to
fin d th e dia gonal o f all} square by
multiplyin g its side by J2 .
H owever, bo th th e Egyptians and th e
Bahylonians showed a cavali ~r disreg'afd for
accuracy. In some cases, th cir c~lculations
give precise answers. ill other c~sl!s, they
uSt quite approximatc mt thods for findin g
areas, but never co ncede th~t these areas are
not ~ccuratc .
The area of this sha pl', for t.'.Xam pie,
72
b
,
, ll±£x.b±.rl
2 2
d
th ey would l'al culate ~ s a formul~ th~t would
give only an ~pproxim~te n.:.~ ult.
THE BIRTH OF MATHEMATICS
Egyptian and Bahylonian mathemati cs
always relate to particular, practical
situations; it was a later civilization , the
Ancient Greeks, wh o first tOok an interest
in purely abstract pro blems. The anCl'stors
of the An ci ent Greeks beb'TI.n to enter the
Grel'k peninsula from th e north around
2000BC and were a force to be rL'C koned
with by around HOOBC. Th l'y ventured in tO
Egypt and MeS<Jporamia, trading with and
learning from th eir hostS.
MATHEMATICS IN VERSE
The earliest Indian texts to present
mathematical problems are the Sulba
sutras, Sanskri t texts which p resent
problem~ and solutions relating to the
construction and positioning of sacrificial
altars. There were 5utras - collections of
aphorisms ~ on many different topiCS. The
aphorisms are written in verse with prose
commentaries and expositions. The sutras
were originally passed on orally, the verse
serving as an aid to memory. The Sulba
sutras are among the oldest Hindu texts,
the earliest dating from perhaps BOOse

There is no mention of Greek
mathem:uics before the sixth century Be ,
when the figures of first Thall'S and thcn
suddenly Pyth agoras appear. Thales of
Miletu~ appa rently brought Babylonian
mathematics to Grecct~ around 575BC. He
has been called the 'first mathematician' on
account of having evolved a theorem and
then demonstrated it, though whether he
actually did this is impos~ibl e to say. What
we know of Thales comes from later
summaries of his reputation and we can't
nOw tell how much of his mythic stature is
deserved. The theorem which bears his
name (the Theorem of Thale~) States tllat
THAlES OF MllETUS (c.624-546BC)
Thales was one of the Seven Sages of
Ancient Greece. He may have studied in
Egypt as a young man and was almost
certainly exposed to Egyptian mathematics
and astronomy. If he wrote any works, they
have not ~urvived.
One story rep orted by
Aristotle tells how he was able
to predict a good harvest
from observations of
weather patterns and
bought up all the olive
presses in Miletus to prove of
how mathematics coul d
~
make him rich. Diogenes -;;;;:::;;:;;
l aertius reported that Thales "
was able t o calculate the
height of the pyramids by
measuring their shadows, and he is
EARLY G EOM U RY
any angl e inscribed in a semicircle is :J. right
angl e (90°) . This was known to the
Babylonians around 1,000 years earlier, and
Thales could have learned it III
Mesopotamia. His demonstration or th e
theorem, if it existed, has not survived.
Writing around IOU years after Thal cs'
death, Produs (cAI0-485BC) credits him
with severa l fundamental geometric
theorems:
• a circle is bisected by any diameter
• the base anglt:s of an isosceles triangle
are equal
• the opposite angles formed by nvo
intl!rsecung lin es arc equal
said to have used his knowledge of
geometry to determine the distance of a
ship from the shore. He put his
mathematical ability to military use, too. He
is said to have predicted an eclipse which
then led to a peaceful settlement in a
war, and later to have helped King
Croesus to get his army across a
river by telling him to dig a
diversion upstream to reduce
the flow of the river until it
was possible to ford it.
Thales is credited also
with a cosmological model
of the Earth as a vast disk
floating in wa ter. Ironically,
reportedly died of
watching a
73
THE SH APE O f THINGS

• tWO triangles are

congruent (of equal shape THE TETRACTYS
and size) if twO angles and For the Greeks, the number 10 was the most perfect
a side arc equal. number. They called it tetractys and revered it for being a
triangular number, the sum of the digits 1 to 4, having as
vVhile Thalcs may be ca ll ed many primes as nonprimes before it and being, in the
the first mathem atician, rhe words of Philolaus (died c.390Bc), 'great, all-powerful and
title 'father of mathematics' all-prooucing, the beginning and the guide of the divine as
is often given to Pythagoras, 01 the terrestrial life'.
who lived fifty years later.
He is perhaps the best
knowll of Greek mathematicians. No one It is likel~', though, that the theorcm was
can have come through school mathematics actually dL'Veloped later by members of the
without learning Pythagoras' famous Pytha gorean schoo l rather than by
theorem: that in a right-angled triangl e, the Pythagoras himself. As with Thales, no
square on the hypotenuse is equal to the wri tin gs by him survive and we arc
sum of the squares on the ()ther twO sides. depcndent on later rcports of his work and
hjs reputation. (It is also possible the
theorem was based on the bn_"'akthroughs of
• earli er marlH::maticians in Ebry}lt or India.)
Th e PythagorL'flns were a secret
brotherhood and held knowledge in
common, so that individual attribution of
work is now impossibl e. Th ey took deli ght
in th e pattcn1.S :l.lld properties of numbers
and sequences and believed that numbers
were at the hcart of all thi.nb>S. The group
P)'lhfl.'fprtls'rheort:m continued tor many years after the death
fl 1~ 1/ + r~ of PythagorJs.

TH E NIN E CHAPTERS
The earliest Chinese mathematical text, The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, was first
produced in the 15t century Be. Many commentaries were written over the ensuing
centuries, the best of which was by liu Hui in AD263. The text demonstrates Pythagoras'
theorem (derived independently) and shows how to calculate such dislilnces as the height of
a tower seen from a hill, the breadth of an estuary, the height of a pagoda and the depth of
a ravine. It also deals with finding are<ls and volumes of figures such as trapezoids, circles,
segments of circles, cylinders, pyramids and spheres.
 EARLY G EO MU RY

PYTH AGORAS (c.SBO-SOO8c)

Pythagoras was an Ionian (Greek)
mathematician and philosopher. After
travelling in the Middle East he moved to
sou thern Italy around 532nc to escape the
tyrannical ruler of his homeland, Samos.
He is best known for the theorem which
bears his na me.
A contemporary of Buddha, l ao Tze and
Confudus, he established the Pythagorean
Brotherhood at his academy in Croton. This
was a religious and philosophical
movement that influenced Aristotle and
Plato and made an important contribution
to the development of western philosophy.
Pythagoras and his followers believed that
everything was related to mathematics and
everything could be predicted and
measured in rhythmiC patterns or cycl es.
The Pythagoreans were v~etarians as they
believed in the trammigration of souls, and them. Pythagoras is said to have been
so any animal could house a former human slaughtered by an angry mob when he
soul. They also, rather curiously, believed refused to run through a bean field to
beans to be special and would not eat escape their pursuit.

THE GOLDEN ACE OF the great math ematicians of the day. Eve n
CLASSICAL GREECE so, we can deduce enough to see that
Athens in the 5th century IlC, between the math emati cs waS pursued fo r its own sake,
Persian and Pdoponn esian wars, saw one of for a delight in knowledge and bt..'c ausc th e
th e gre:lt~ t flow erings of
intell ectual life in the hi story
of the world. Sad ly, no 'All things which can be known have number; for it is not
mathemati cal tex t~ survi ve pmsible that without number anything can be either
from the perio d and WI: have conceived or known .'
only a few scrappy accounts Philolaus, 4th century Be
ofth e problems addressed by

75
 TH £ SHAP E O f THINGS

'God is like a skilful geometrician.;

Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medid, c. 1636

made a distinction between the practical

arithmetic of everyday life (of which
nothing of theirs is recorded) and the
higher pursuit of mathemat ics and logic,
which has come down to us through
the wTitings of those who bendited from
their legaL),.

THREE PRO BLE M S

Greek mathematicians defined three great
classical problems in gL'()metry: squaring
the circle, trisecting the angle and doubl ing:
the cuhe, all to be ach ieved only with
compass and straight edge. Thcse problems
were to tax mathematician~ for 2,200 years
Thr Allfiem Graff Wi'I'I: n<1Jilrt fhnt rbr &'11111 is II until they were all proved to be impossibl e.
spbi'n mouillg ill SPflf/! IIlId belit'ut'd rbllr lIlflfbt'lflftrics The issue of squaring thl;' circle first
is tbt kq ro I/Jldffl"Stfilldilig rJJf IlIliu~/'YI'. appears in relation to Ana..xagoras, a natural
philosopher who ""TOtc the first scientifi c
Greeks believed that the working~ of nature best-sell er, 011 Natllre. (A copy could be
could be understood through bought in Athens for OJle dracJmla.)
mathematics. To them we owe Anaxagoras was imprisoned for denying
the concept of the universe as that the ~l.I n wa~ a deity. saying: rather
, harmonious cosmos that it was a huge
governed by laws that red-hot Stone, bigger
discovered by reason than the whole of the
th an govern ed by all Greek pcnin sul:I and
unknowable deity), the islands, and that
idea thar the earth reflected li ght from the
sphere and moves illuminated the
space, and the
concept of Allilxllgonu
mathematical (c.500-42SIlC) .iJ}{Lf

proof. Th e Greek pllt ill jail for dmyillg

math ematicians

76

III 'The Allrimr of Days', poer (/lid painrer rVillifllll
Blake depicted God flf mrbirur of tbe III/WnW,
prot/lid/If{ rbe Eartb witb f{eollletric illstnlll!ellis.
moon. While 111 prison, Anaxagoras
oc(."Upied himselfhy trying to discover a way
of 'squaring the circle' - b';ven any circle,
creating a square of exactly equal area using
only straight edbTt! and compass.
The problem of doubling the cube
emerged at the rime of the great plague in
Athens (430nc). Eratosthenes repOrts that
the people consulted the oracle at Delos,
and the god Apollo demanded that to stOp
the plague they must double the size of his
altar. They duly doubled the dimensions of
the altar, but that of course increased iD;
volume by a factOr of eight (1 J), nOt two.
Apollo was nOt satisfied, and the plague
went on to kill around a quarter of the
( A RLY G EOMHRY
population. The Greek craftsmen, who
could not work out how to achieve what
Apollo required, asked the philosopher
Plato for ad\'ice. H is answer was that the
intention of the oracle was to shame the
Greeks for their neglect of mathematics and
geometry in particular. ([here is another
version of the origins of the problem in
which .M.inos, king of Crete, commissions a
tOmb for his infant son, Glaucus, who died
by falling into a vat of honey. Minos (k'ddes
the tomb that is proposed is too small and
demands that iD; size be doubled.) The
Indian Vedic scriptures state that a second
plea at an altar in the same place as a first
pit;:;) demanded a (."Ullie altar nvice the
volume of the first, and this may have
sugbrcsrcd the problem to the Greeks.
The German mathematician Carl
Friedrich Gauss stated that it was nOt
possible to douhle the cube with only
straight edge and compass, and this was
proved hy Pierre \Vantzel in 1837.
Tbe plaf{lIe of Atbmr is illtnpreted SUlItr<rbat
idealistically by Micbael Swarts (16J 8-64).
77
 m£ SHAP E O f THINGS

Greeks for pure or thl.'Orerical methods led

'In proceeding in fa mechanical] way, did not
one lose irredeemably the best of geometry?'
Plato
Trisecting the ~ngle is ~ l e~ eng~ging
problem and has no e.xciting mythical
histOry attached to it; it is po~ib l e that it
devdoped from the Egyptians' need to
divide angles between SClrs in order to tell
the time at night. The problem is simply to
divide any angle into three equal parts using
only straight edge and compass. It is possible
to trisec[ some angles (a right-angle, for
example) and there arc mechanical methods
for trisecting: any angle which were known
to the Greeh. However, the desire of the
them to ('Ontinue th e quest rCb":lrdlcss of the
lack of a practical need .
GEOMETRY RULES THE UNIVERSE
As we have seen, Greek mathematicians
were rcluct~nt to recognize irr~ti ona l
numbers (those which can't be expressed as
a ratio of two whole numbe rs). Geometry
cannOt explain all things if it is limited to
who le numbers and ratios of whole
numbers - which becomes apparent as soon
as we look at the diagonal of a square with a
side of one unit. This alone would bave
been enough to bring the Pythagorean
edifice crashing down. A second problem,
expressed in the paradoxes of Zeno the
Eleatic (c.450nc), made matters worse.

ACHillES AND THE TORTOISE

To demonstrate the absurdity of dealing in
whole units, however small, leno proposed
a race between Achilles and a tortoise. The
tortoise has a head start, but even though
Achilles can run very quickly he can never
overtake the tortoise. In the time it takes
Achilles to cover half the distance from the
starting block to the tortoise, the tortoise
has moved on. When Achilles covers half
remaining distance, the tortoise
has moved on further, though

to come level

78
 EARLY G EOMETRY

Zeno's parOldoxes show that,

however much a unit of
measurement is subdivided, DEMOCRITUS AND THE INFINITESIMAL
it never expresses the The chemist and philosopher Democritus
continuum that we see in (c.460-370BC) proposed that everything is made up
real life - even a sequence of of infinitely small and varied particles moving around
infinitesimal steps is still in em pty space. The creation of our own and other
artificial. worlds came about, he claimed, because the particles
Confronting these twO coagulated in different config urations, giving
difficulti es - the existence of materials wi th certain similarities and differences. (The
irrational numbers and idea had already been suggested by leucippus.)
division into infinitesimal Extending this to geometric figures, a square pyramid,
portions - forced a paradigm for example, can be seen as a stac:k of infinitely thin
shift in Greek mathematics. squares ranging from the largest at the ba se to the
At the time of Pythagoras, infinitely small at the apex. Because the layers are
numbers were thought of as infinitely thin, each square is effecti vely the same size
points, often represented as its neighbou rs - but of course it can't be, for then
concretely by pebbles (ealled the pyramid would be a cube.
fll/CII/i, gi\'ing us the word Breaking down an area or volume into infinitesimally
'calculation'). But by the thin slices is the underlying prindple of integral calculus,
time of Euclid, 200 years but Democritus could
later, magnitude was progress towards this as a
represented by line segments method because he
- atOmism had given way to could not get past his
continuity and the model of logical objections to
the basis of the universe had the slices being
shifted from the discrete different sizes. The
numbers of mathematics to method was used
th e measurements of successfully by
geometry. \¥hile J2 can't Antiphon, Eudoxus
be represented as a number and later by
(in the Greeks' terms) it IS Archimedes,
very ea~y to draw it as a derived the 'method of
line segment. exhaustion' to find the
area of a shape (see page 146).

Thl' odd cOllplt : DnlllX'ritlls, fhl' ItllIgbillg pbilorphn; piert/red

alollgsidl' Hmldillls, fbI' {"Iyillg philompbl'1:

79
 TIn SH APE O f THIN GS
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Practically no Greek mathematical textS are
extant from before the 4th century, bur we
have nOt lost the work of this period. Perhaps
the most famous mathematician of all time,
Euclid of Alexandria, gathered togcther and
recorded the inheritance of ancient
geometry, codifying and extending it in his
Ele1J/('//ts around 300oc. By this time, the
Greeks had discovered many of the standard
curves (ellipse, parabola, hyperbola and so
on), a fore-runner of integral calculus in the
method of exhaustion, and methods for
dercmlining the volume of a cone and a
sphere. Though Plato was not a
mathematician himself, his academy 111
Athens was the centre of the mathematical
world and had helped to crystallize the
distinction between pure maths and the
practical application of numbers.
Euclid's Elements nOt only demonstrates
the mathematics of the Ancient Greeks bur
also their d".."elopment of logical method.
Euclid establi shed five axioms and five
80
'common notions' and deduced from these
several hundred theorems or proofs,
exemp lifying the principle of logithJI
deduction which endured for centurit:S.
Although Euclid's text is famous for its
treatment of planar gcometry (the geometry
of flat, two-dimensional shapes), it abo
deals with number theory, algebra and solid
geometry. rt was intended as a textbook of
elementary mathematic's and does not deal
with either simple arithmetic (which would
have been beneath its intended readers) or
the more complex geometry of curvilinear
shapes and conics investigated later by
Apollonius (which would go bL)'ond what
was required).
The five basic axioms from which Euclid
develops everything else are:
I. Any twO points can be joined by a single
straight line.
2. Any finite straight lin e can be extended as
a stra ight line.
3. A circle can be drawn through any centre
and with any radius.
Tile OxyrbJl/cbl1S papynlSef. fillds frulll fill al/rimt
toWII dllmp. conrailled tbe oldest ,md lIIOSt
[(1II1plete difl?!YD/1f frrllll Euclid's Elements.
 EARLY G EOMETRY

4 . All ri ght an gles are equal

to each oth er.
5. If twO str.:light lin es in a
plane arc crossed by
another s trai ght lin e
(call ed th e transversal),
and the illtt:ri or an gles
bern'eell the two lines and
the transversal lyin g on
one side of th e tr.:lnsversal
add up to le5S than twO
right angles, then the t\\'o
strai ght lin es can he
extended until th ey
eventually intersect on
that side of the transversal.
EU CLID OF ALE XANDR IA (c.3 25- 26SBC)
Euclid wa s a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria,
Egypt, almost certainly during the reign of ptolemy I
(323-283BC). He is often considered to be the 'father of
geometry'. His most popular work, Elements, is the most
successful te xtbook in the history of mathematics and was
used for over two thousand years. Euclid also wrote works
on perspective, conic sections and spherical geometry.
Euclid would have written on papyrus scrolls and, as
these decay readily, his work has come down to u~ only in
copies. The oldest surviving version of Euclid's Elements is
in a Byzantine manuscript written in AD888 - making it
closer in time to us than to Euclid! We can't be sure that
we have Euclid's own text, rather than something
improved upon or altered by later scholars.

The last of th ese is also

call ed th e 'pa rall el postulate'. It is not as
self-evident an d self-suffici ent as the first
four. Plato demanded that axioms should be
simple, self-evident and so cl early trut;' that
they need nOt be proven . \Vhil e th e first
four meet his conditions, th e fifth does not.
Thi s wa s probab ly evident even m
Eucli d's lifetime. However, it took wltil the
t 9th century befure anyone coul d prove the
final axiom.
Ll addition, Eucli d stated five 'common
notions' which are less sO'ictl y related to
gL'Ollletry:
I . Things whieh arc equal ro the same thing
are al so equal to onc another.
2.1f equals are added to equals, th(' wholes
are equal.
3. If cqual s are subtracted from equals, the
remainders arc equal.
4. Things whi ch coincide with one an other
are equal to one another.
5. The wh ole is grcater than the part.
Eucli d W:1S writing just a fter th e end of
th e Hell eni c peri od, when both Al exander
th e Great and AristOtl e had died. Th t!
empire of Al exander was broken up, and
Athens lost its supremalY as an intell ectual
centre , the intc lli gen t.~ ia convenin g
in stc:1d in AJ ex:1ndria in E gypt (Eucli d
included). AJexandria was th e capital of
Egypt and th en fell wlder Roman rul e
when Cleopatra's army lost the battl e of
Actium in 31Be. Th e first to benefit from
Euclid 's work were th e Rom:1n s, bur
math ematics W:1S not hi ghly rega rded by
R oman scholars and was taught for its
practi cal usefuln ess rather than anythin g
else. So an architect would nced to
understand geometry, calculation and load-
bearin g and a merch311 t would need to
understand 3rithmetic, hut no one was
parti cularly con ce rn cd to extend the
boundarics of kn owl edge in mathcmatics
for its own sake.

B1
 THt SHAPE O f THIN GS

Bllilt .·1070- 80, tbt"

COIOSft"lnil ill Rnlllt" is all
t"Uipliml alllpbitbt"fitl"t"
allli a mllftnpiue of
ROJ/lUll mrbirurlll"t"
alill t"IIgillUl7l1g.

The end of the Roman Empire in the activity in Europe for a long time. lnstead,
\Vcst, when G ermanic tribes under the we muSt look to Lldia and then the Midd le
leadership of Odoa cer overran mueh of East for (k-vclopmellts in geometry as 111
modern Imly, saw the end of math ematical other areas of mathematical endeavour.

HYPATIA Of ALEXANDRIA (c.370-41 5)

Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of
Alexandria, a notable mathematician and
philosopher (it is from his yersion of Euclid's
Elements that all surviving texts are derived).
Hy patia was a Neopla tonist, and lectured on
Neoplatonism and mathematics. She is the
earliest known significant female
mathematician. Sadly, none of her
mathematical works suryives, though her
commentari es on the work of other
mathematicians may be preserved in some of
the annota tions that have come down to us.
She was murdered by a Christian mob in 415,
indted by the patriarch of Alexandria to wipe
out pagan scholarship. The library at
Al exandria was destroyed at the same time.

82

Trigonometry
Trigonometry is the branch of mathematics
concerned with calculating angles,
particularly in right-angled triangles. Until
the 16th century, it was really a part of
geometry, but since then it has come to be
considered an independent area of
mathematics.
As any polygon can be reduced to a
number of triangles, trigonometry enables
mathematicians to work with all areas or
surfaces that arc hounded by straight lines.
Plane trigonometry deals with areas, angles
and distanct!s in one plane. Spherical
trigollometry deals with angles ami
distances in 3D space.
TRIANGLES INTO PYRAMIDS
The Egyptians had some knowledge of
trigonometry as their building of the
pyramids demonstrates. The Ahmcs
papyrus includt!S a problem that finds the
seiad, or slope, of a pyramid from the height
and tht! bast!. ft was expresst!d as the
opposite ratio to our measurt! of gradient.
BELOW. Arty polygon mil be dividrd illto tritlllgkr,
wbicb 1I1f1kes rb~ atfmlnrioll of tlH'tI wry if)'01l
liN rnppl/01I/n7J.
T RIGONOMHRV
The Eb'Yptians wt!rt! not rib,{lrOUS in
thdr study of rriangles, though. As in other
areas of mathematir.-s, they wt!re interested
in practical applications rather than pure
trigonometry. Early Indian mathematicians,
too, knew something of trigonometry. The
Sulba slltras, in the context of describing
altars, contain a calculation of the sint! of
rr/4 (45°) as Y.t2 . However, it was left to tht!
Greeks to develop trigonometry properly.
THE 360 ° TURN
The Greeks took tht! straight line and tht!
eirelt! as tht! basis of their geometry and
from this devel0Jled trigonometry. Tht!
ABOVE: Hi nill rbuw gnu/ient tIS {I Ttlrio of the
verrirnl me {llid b0/7~0Ilrrt! distnl/ce, rbollgb we've
revened rbe ordo' gll[f tbe AI/{'i~nr ElOprillllf.
83
TH E SH APE O f T HIN GS
250 CUBITS
• ,
180 CU8 1TS
250 CUBITS
convention of 360° in a circle and 60' in a
degree ori!,rinates with Hellenic maths - it
seems to have been in use by the time of
Hipparchus of Bjthynia (c.190-110BC). It
probably derives from the Babyl onian
aStronomical division of the wdiac into
twelve signs or 36 decans, and the annual
seasonal lyde of approximately 360 days.
Th e superior system used by the
Babylonian s for representing fractions
SfKfD .. RUN .. 180 CU81TS ~ S ~ PALMS/ CUBITS
RISE 250 CU81TS "
,
,,,
,,,
,,
,,,
,,
~- - - - . ---
The EgyprimlY colat/tired rbe 5cket! 01" rlope of
tI pymmid by ill1agillillg a righr-allgled fliallgh
iI/ride the rtl"IICfIll?
made it more usefu l than either the
E!,ryptian or Greek ~ystems, and Ptol emy
(C.AD90- 168) followed their base-60 system
in di\'iding de!,"Tees into 60 minutes (partes
lIIil/little primtle) and each minute into 60
seconds (Ptl11es mil/little sec/mdtle).
SPHERICAL AND PLANAR
TRIGONOMETRY
\,yhil e a planar triangle is on a flat plane,
a spherical triangle is one inscribed on
the surface of a sphere. It is made up of
arcs of three intersecting circles drawn
around the sphere, or planes cutting
through the sphere.
Th e first definition of a spherical
triangle is found in a work by the
Zodiac dock: ir ll'as tIn Baby/olliaw; l1:ho divided
rhe zodiac iuro 12 siglls 01· 36 dfCalls - njlfCIillg
the;'· rearollal cycle ofappl"oxill/tlrely 360 dayr.
 TR IGONOMETRY

Tbe first nmlfiOIl of fI spberiml spherical surfaee and the first

t/it/llgh cOllles ill /I <lIQI-k to treat trih"Onometry as a
,
by rbe Egypriflllll'!lenelt/{j,f
,, ,, discrete discipline. H e
ofAlexlllllb-ia. :
',/
/,
/
......
,, '."
developed spherica l
trigonometry to its
// " ". current form .
Egyptian Menelaus
"", ,-."
of Alexandria
(c.AD 100).
/
.'
,
,
..
,/'
/
THE RI SE OF THE
H e developed TRIAN GLE
\\" , - , / , / /
the equivalents of Hipparchus was
/''-'.
Euclid's principles of the first to compile
planar trigonometry ta bles of trigonometric
but appliL-d to spherical functions. His interest
triangles. Spherical triangles was in imaginary triangles
are clearly essential in aStronomy 'drawn' on the imagincd sphere
and mapping. of the nights)..), that related heavenly bodies
\-Vhile the angles of a planar triangle to one another SO that he could calculate
ahvay-; add up to 180°, those of a spherical and predict the positions of planets.
triangle always add up to more than nmo. Hipparchus considered L'":lch triangle to be
There are other fundamental differences, inscribed within a circle and developed a
too. Until around 1250, and the work of system of calculating angles from chords.
Nasir ai-Din al-Tusi (1201 - 74), spherical H e drew up rabies of the chords produced
trigonometry was always integrated with by drawing angles of different sizes
astronomy. AI-Tusi was rhe first to li st six which relate to the modern concept of sines
distinct types of right-angled triangles on a and cosines.

TRIGONOMETRIC FUNCTIONS

There are six trigonometric func tions that sin A ,, side o~~osite
hypotenuse
enable us to calculate the size of an angle
given two sides of a right-angled triangle, cos A
b
, side adjacent
hypotenuse
or the length of a side given one side and , side o~~osite
an angle. , tan A
Ii side adjacent

csc «0_) A "" ,c h;tpotenuse

side opposite
• c hypotenuse
'" A Ei == side adjacent

, , cot A ,b side adjacent

side opposite

8S
 THE SHAPE Of THINGS

In his aStronomical text the Almagest,

the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptnlemy
(ADlOO-170) extended Hipparchus' work,
deriving better trigonometric tables and
loosely defining the inverse trigonometric
functions arcsine and arccosine.
He llsed a nominal radius of 60 as the
basis of his table of chords and gave values
in steps of Iho from 0° to 180° accurate to
1/3600 of a unit. This is equivalent tn a
table of sines for L'very 1/4" from 0" to 90° .
Ptolemy worked with Euclid's axioms and
concentrated on planar triangles in order to
d("ve]op his model of the heavenly bodies
revolving around the Earth.
Ptolemy lived and worked in Alexandria.
Details of his life bave not been preserved -
it's even possible that he may have been
Greek in origin. His was th e l':lrlicst work
on trigonometry to be circulated in Europe f1ippa/rhus ill his obsrrl!(trory ar AJ~x'lIIdria lookillg
in the Nli ddle Ages and W;L~ used for many ar rb~ sran. H~ bas b~1I adired wirh rbe iln'mr;oll
ccntu ri es. His model of the heavens ofthf am'olabe (IS <1.'ell lIS (be 111711illlll] sph~Jr.
sun'ived intact until th e work of the Poli sh
astronomer Mikolaj Kopernik (Copernicus,
1473-1543), which put the sun at the centre
of the solar system.

SINE OFTHE TIMES

After th e Greeks, lndian and Arah
mathematicians worked on trigonometry.
Arab scholars translated and mastered the
work of their Greek predeec..~s()rs and soon
went hL'Yond it. The Indian mathematicians
were largely working in their own tradition,
which had drawn independently on the
Egyptian and Babylonian heritage.

The geIJCf'IIrrir (EaNh-cmtnd) IlIIivflYf' (H39)

sb(T'.J.'s Al'istork's fo ur dell/f'IIts sl/n'Ollllded by
rbe pia/lets alld we abode ofGot! in [t'r alia.

86
 T RIGONOMHRV

TRIANGLE S AND WATER

One practical application of trigonometry
was to calculate the gradient of water flow.
The Sinhalese inhabitants of the city of
Anuradhapura, Sri l anka, used
trigonometry for this purpose. Theirs was
one of the greatest Asian civilizations of the
ancient world. To farm the dry land around
and supply water to the huge city, the
Sinhalese built a highly sophisticated
irrigation system, which consisted of
overground and underground channels, III "wderll AIIIII'adb"pIITa, bom/plnllps b,W~ rep/ared
reservoirs and ponds. rb~ CQTl/pkx il"11gllTiQII ryrtffll sta/1rd 1900 j f'tl/T "SQ,

The Hindu mathem:lticians were the sun~ving version may date from around
first to work with sines as we now define AD400 - hut it claims to have been passed
them. Early in the fourth century, or down directly by the sun god m
perhaps late in the fifth, the unknown 2,163, J OJ Be! The Al)'tlbJmtiytl by Aryabbam I
author of the Indian astronomical treatise (c.475- 550), which summarizes H indu
Suryn SiddJJtrllttl, calculated the sine mathematics as they stood in the first half of
function for intervals of 3.75° from 3.75° to the 6th century, includes a table of sines.
90°. The date of the text is nOt known - the Brahmagupt:l also published a table of sines
for any angle in 618.
The first table of
MEASURING THE EARTH tanbTt!nL~ aJld cotangents was
Eratosthenes (276--194sc) noticed that, while the sun is conso'ucred around 860 by
overhead at noon at the summer solstice in Syene (now the Persian astronomer
Aswan), in Alexandria, 500 miles (800 km) northwest, it is Ahmad ihn 'Abdallah
at an angle of 7" at the same date and time. He assumed Hahash al-Hasib al-
the sun's rays to be nearly parallel when they hit the Earth, i\tlarwazi. The Syrian
since the sun is so far away. Working with trigonometry astronomer, Ahu 'abd Allah
and the known distance between the two cities, he Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn
calculated the circumference of the Earth. The accuracy of Sinan al-Batt:llli al-Harrani
his calculation can't be assessed exactly because the length as-Sabi' (c.85H- 919), gav!! a
of his unit of measure, the stadia, is not certain. rule for finding the elevation
of the sun ahove the horizon

87
 THt SHAP E O f THINGS

The Persian mathematician and

aStronomcr Abu al-\Vafa 3l-Buzjani
CALCULATING SINES (940- 997/8) worked principally on
The sine func ti on is the ratio of the trigonometry, bur most of his work h3s been
side opposite an angle in a right. lost. H e intrOduced the wngent function
angled triangle to the hypotenuse. and improved methods of ca lcllbting
To calculate the sine function, trigonometry tables. H e discovered the sine
draw a circle of radius 1 and draw the formub for spherical geometry:
required triangle within it, like this.
sin (A) sin (6) sin (C)
--=--=--
sin (0) sin (b) sin (c)

A cr3ter on the moon is named after him in

honour of his extensive studies of the
motions of the moon .
Arab mathematicians con tinued to
refine tables and trigonometric exclusively
in the service of astronomy until al-TlIsi

The distance OP, the hypotenuse, is

the radius of the circle, 1. The y
coordinate of point P gives the sine
of angle a (:AP/l). The ci rcl e, called
the unit circle (because it has radius
1) is, by convention, used to derive
and relate all the trigonometric
functions.

hy measuring a shadow (the principle 011

which SWldials work). His 'table of shadows'
is effectively a tabl (' of cotangentS for 3ngles
from 1° to 90 0 , n inrcrv31s of 1°. H e 3lso
calcubtcd the tilt of the E3rth's 3xis,
23 ° 35'. h W3S through al-B3ttani's work
th3t sines came to Europe 3nd he m3Y h3vc AI·Barrani mlclllrmd tbe lilt of thl' Earth:r axis at
discovcred them independently of the work 13 0 15'. HI'; also er/r1llated (be Imgtb of a soIaryefl/·
of Aryabhata. IQ be ;65 days. 5 bOllrs, 46 lIlilllltl'S and 14 sl'fOm/s.

B8

AI- n ISi} pllpil Qmb ai-Dill al-Shira':J 11'1IS
penoll to come lip with II sdmrifir nplalllltioJl of
tbe rIIlllb(T<1J.
established trigonometry as a separate
discipline in his observatory in A-laragheh in
the 13th century. One early development
was the mathematical explanation of the
rainbow by al-Tusi's pupil Qutb aI-Din al-
Shirazi (1236-1311). Ulugh Beg, the
grandson of th e great Mongol conqueror
Timur (famhcrlaine the Great), established
an observatOry at Samarkand in the early
15th century ami created tables of sines and
tanbTCnts for every minute of arc, accurate to
five scxagesimal places. It was one of th e
greatest achievements in mathematics up to
this time.
FINDIN G DIRECTIONS
One spur to Arab advances in gcomerry and
surveying was the need to determin e the
direction of Mecca (q ib/a) from any place, so
that the devout Muslim could face the holy
city for prayer as demanded by the Qu'ran.
\Vith this need in mind, Arab geometers
adopted the sten.'Oscopic projection, which
produces a planar image of a spherical
T RIGONOMHRY
the /n,r surface, with circles mapped either to circles
or straight lines. This had first heen used by
Apollonius and Ptolemy.
From the 9th century, the Arabs
perfected the astrolabe, an astronomical
instrument originally designed in Ancient
Greece. It consists of a series of concentric
metal rings etched with the positions of th e
sun, moon , Stars and planets. Simpl y
moving the rings replaced ream s of tedious
calculation. The astrolabe could be used for
astronomy, timekeeping, surveying,
n:l\~gation and triangulation.
The combined Greek and Arab
knowledb'C of triangles came to Europe with
T be 1l'qllire111mr for Mllslims to pray to NlecclI
several rimer II dlly 71'IIS II spm· to imprlJl!nnmrs
illfilidillgdirertiollS.
89
 TIn SHAP E O f T HI NGS

the translation of many Arab Th~ s~xtllln 17IJollitiolliud

texts intO Latin from the 11 th IlIIvigatioll. It tlllowed soilon to plot
century. The their {IOyitioll by trflrillg the YIIII S cOline
Europeans rook agaillst tbe borlum.
to the astrolabe
enthusiastically trigonometric
remained the functions, and
na\'igation instrument embarked on a
until the development set calculated
of the sextant w ,n even
18th century. greater degrce
of accuracy but died
INTO THE MODERN WORLD before completing them.
Although medil-,val European scholars (They were finished by
translated Arab and Greek works on one of his pupils.)
trigonometry and other breometry, they These developments cam e just before
added nothing new of their own. It was not trigonometry, and geometry as a whole,
until the explosion III scientific and took a new direction, becomin g involved
mathematical knowledge in Europe from the
Renaissance that trigonomerry prob'l"cssed
again. Johannes Miiller von Konigsberg
(\436-76), also known as Regiomontanus,
was the author of the first hook entirely
devoted to trigonomerry, all Triallgles of
Eve"-J Killd, printed in 1533. It brought
tobocther all the formulae required to work
with planar and spherical trigonomctl1' and
was greatly admired and intluentiaL Hi s
work was ll~ed and adapted by the great
Polish astronomer Kopcmik (Copemicus) in
his new model of a solar ~"ystem centred on
the SU Il. Kopernik worked with the help of
Prussian math ematician Georg Rh eticus
(1514-76). In his own work, Rh eticus went
fuITher than Regiomontanus, finall y making
trigonometry about triangles. H e diSClrded
the old tradition of considering
trigonometric functions with respect to the III rbe 16tb cmtlllY, J\1iko/aj Kopemil.: dnllollStmted
arc of a circle, freeing the triangle to stand tbllt tb~ Earrh circles rbe filii a/ollg with tbe orber
alon e. H e calculat ed detai led tablcs for all pla l/ets. Tbis tl/I"I/ed pn·viol/s belieft 011 tbeil" bmd.

90

DEADLY TRI ANGLES
Galileo Galilei (1564-1 642) discovered thllt
the movement of a projectile is parabolic
and could be separated into vertical and
horizontal movement. This led to the
formula for calculating the range of a
cannon or other artillery weapon,
disregllrding air resistance:
~',----------------,c-----------------,
]So
~,
'"
'"
Tlx IlIqllisirian jim:t'd Cali/eo
ro I"fCIJm his bdi~fthtlf fJx
Eill1h 1ll00l'd INTJlllld fIx SIIII.
with algebra and the slow evolution of
algebraic geometry (sec Chapter 5). WIth
this hmdamental shift, trigonometry became
more theoretical, separated from the. real-
world shapes with which it was oribrinally
concerned, and later even embroiled with
imaginary and complex Ilumber.;.
At the same time, though, the practical
applications of trigonometry were growing.
The invention of accurate clocks, better
navigation methods and artillery, as well as
new applications for optics and advanc,-'S in
astronomy all demanded the application of
trigonometry and aided it.~ development in
new directions.
TR IGONOM ET RY
Vo sin 2A
9
where 9 is the acceleration due to gravity
(about 9.81 metres/second')
Vo is the muzzle velocity (velocity at which the
cannonbllil leaves the cannon, or bullet leaves
the gun)
A is the angle of elevation
The mllximum range is achieved when A "" 45°.
//
,
,,/
/' 1100 m ~ ( 160 mit )' ~~ ~:.t
~ m"m".~
/ ~.
"
MOVING ON
Triangles and circles are inextricably linked
in the histOiY of mathematics, and with
Galileo's work on projectiles another curve,
the parabola, becomes involved. Circles,
curve; and the effects of revoh~ng shapes in
space to produ{'e solids of revolutioll lift
g,-'Ometry away from straight lines on the
flat page. and move it into space. \Vith the
circles and curves, roo, we begin to take
steps towards contemplating infinity - that
great bugbear of early mathematicians -
which evcntually would free b'Cometry even
from three dimensions to cavort through as
many dimt'mions as we care to imagine.
"
L-:"-:
CHAPTER 4

In the
ROUND

The world around us has provided the impetus

for much of the development of mathematics.
That the Earth itself is a sphere , and the sky
looks like an inverted bowl above us, has put
cunres, circles and spheres at the heart of
geometry from early times. These features of
the world have led to challenging problems
with explaining, depicting and modelling the
universe as we experience it. How can we
represent the three-dimensional environment
we see in a flat drawing? How can we map the
spherical Earth on a two-dimensional chart?
Grappling with these issues led to a theoretical
investigation that threw up further questions
about dimension and geometry. Sometimes,
the world does not seem to conform to the
geometry laid out by Euclid which was
accepted for 2,000 years. New models for
dealing with these situations have opened
exciting and fruitful new avenues for
mathematicians.

III tbe relll world it seems ns ifpllmlle/liller came ta!!,ffber.

I N TH£ ROUND

Curves, circles and conics

The circle-lies behind all trigonometry, as it
defines a full n..'Volution about a point. The
triangle and the circle togcther fomH~d the
basis of astronomical geometry, with
astronomical problems being explored by
drawing imaginary triangles on the circular
dome of the sky. Galileo's model of
projectiles brings another curve ro
trigonometry and introduces a link
between trigonometric functions and
conics - curves which can he derived from
slicing through a solid cone. III fact,
triangles and t:urves have been inseparable
since the earliest geolllt::tries. The Sir iratI{" Newton. Oll~ of tb~ ,",ost QlIlStdllliillg
trigonometric tables were all defined 'II/{lthc'lfIaticillllf offill time. calmlaud Jf to J 6 plilrer.
initially from triangles drawn within
circles, using diameters and chords. Angles CALCULATING 1t
arc mea~"Ured with reference to the full Th e Babylonians used an approximate value
r(.-volution defined by a circle, which was of the ratio we now call 11, 3.1 25, which they
di\'ided at least by the time of Hipparchus ohtained by calculating or measuring the
into 360°. perimeter of a hexagon drawn inside
a circle.

o
THE MAGIC RATIO - 1t
From the earliest times, the circle has heen
endowed with reli gious and mystical
sib'llificance. It is the perfect shape, having
no sides (or infinit e sides), the endless line,
found everywhere in nature. People have The Ahmes papyrus shows that
known for thousands of years that the ratio Egyptians used a value of !)I'hl or about
between the diameter and circumference of 3.16049.
a circle is always the. same. and have given The Chinese text Thr Nine Chaptm
thi s number sl)ecial significance. \Ve gives instmctions for finding the area of
represent the ratio by the G reek letter 11 a circle by squaring the diameter, di\~ding
(pi), notation popularized by the Swiss by 4 and multiplying by 3, SO using a value
mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-83) of 3 for Jr.
in 1737, bur first used by William Joncs in Archimedes dcvelopt'd more
1706. Pi is an irrational number; it has an sophisticated method that involved drawing
infinite number of decimal places (sec table polygons both within and Hound a circle,
on page opposite). giving upper and lower limits for a value of
 CURVES, CIR CUS AND CONICS

IT.By adding more sides to the poIYb'tlll, he
could obtain increasingly precise limiting
values . He settled on 96 sides, which gives a
value for IT hetwecn mil! and 1.217, or an
average value. of about 3.1418. lt was
Archimedes, too, who discovered that the
same ratio can he used to calculatc the afca
of a circle when multiplied by the square of
the radius (lTr).
(1642- 171 i) USed the binomial theorem to
calculate j[ to 16 places.
Today, j[ has heen calculated by
computer to more than 10" places and on
personal computers there are ptt;,nry of
programs for calculating It to a billion or
more places. This degrec of accuracy is
completely unnecessary for most practical
purposes. If the Earth's circumference is
calculated from irs radius using a value of](

0 0 0
accura te to only 10 decimal places the result
is accurate to arOUlld a fifth of a mi.llimetre.

SQUARING THE CI RCLE

Chinese, Indian and Arab mathcmaticians
caleulated j[ to b'Teater degrees of precision
but had no better method than tha t of
Afchimedcs. For example, in AD263 Liu
Hui used a polygon with 3,072 side.~
and obtained a value of 3.1416. At the
end of the 17th ccntury, hetter methods
of calculation were developed. The English
mathematician Sir Isaa c Newton
Th e problem of squaring the circle,
although made famous by Anaxagoras.
troubled earlier mathematicians, tOo.
Ahmes givcs a method for constructing a
square of almost the same areu as a circle,
which consists of taking away QIlC ninth of
the diameter of the circle and using the
remainder us me side of the square, tbough
this is showll as a way of calculating the arca
of a circle, nOt solving the. classical problem.

WHO WHERE WHEN WHAT

Ahmes Egypt c. 16508c !!% (3. 16049)

Archimedes Greece c.25011C ~l';,l < n < 1111 (3.1418)
Chang Hong China AD130 3.1622 (Jl0)
Ptolemy Greece c. 150 3. 1416
liu Hui China 263 l.911/l.l 10 (3 .1416)
Zu Chongzhi China 480 JJS/ II ) (3.141659292)
Aryabhata India 499 t,l,~J ~ O.wo (3.1416)

al-Khwarizmi Iran c.800 3. 1416

Fibonacci Italy 1220 3.141818
al-Kashi fran c. 1430 3. 14159265358979
F ran~ois Viete France 1593 3.1415926536
Adriaan van Roomen Belgium 1593 3. 141592653589793
Ludolph van Ceulen Germany 1596 3.1415926535897932384626433832795029
 I N THE ROUND
(It is from this that we dedun! th e Egyptian
v:llue for rr of 3.16049.)
We h:lve already seen that the Greeks
tried and failed to solve the problem
geometrically. La ter mathem3ticians also
tried and 311 f3iled. Squaring the circle with
compass and ~traight edge bl'{:ame ~uch a
preoccupation of both professional 3nd
311Ulteur m:lthenmticians in 18th-century
Europe th3t in L775 the AC3dcmie des
SciencC$ in P3ris p3ssed a resolution s3ying
that it would nOt look at any more proposed
solutions. Soon aftenvards, the ROY31
Society in London did the same as they
were inwldated with faulty solutions . Some
mathematici3ns even tried to fudge the iS~l.Ie
by assigning a different value to rr.
"Vhen Carl Louis Ferdin3nd \'on
Lindemann (IS52- 1939) proved in 1880 th3t
n is 3 tr3nscendental number (i.e., nOt the
foot of any :llg't!braic equation with rational
coefficients), thi.~ demonstrated finally that
CIRCLE
ELLIPSE
- - - PARABOLA
HYPERBOLA
96
squ:lring the circle is, in fuct, impossible -
it is quite impossible to work with :l
tr.mscendental number using straigh t edge
and comp3SS.
C O NI C SECTI O NS
A circle is not the on ly curve. \-VhiIe the
circle 3nd circubr 3rcs wen' the first curves
to be studied 3nd uscd, there 3re three other
n:!guI3r curves which C3me early to the
attention of geometers. These 3re the
par3bola, hyperbob and ellipse. Each can he
formed by cutting throubrh a cone. These
are called conic sections.
The first influenti3l work on conic
sections was hy Apollonius of Perg3
(c.262-190BC), an Alexandrine-Greek
geometer and astronomer known as 'the
Gre3t Geometer'. Although Apollonius
wrote other works, only his treatise on
conics has survived. The first" sections dr3w
on previnm writings, but the later parts are
8101'1' .--J.pcIlOlliIlS,
diJjmllf-sb(lpffl COllI'S
WI'1"f' Ilsi"d to dn;''t! <'fIcb
rype ofwrvl'. ApoDol/illr
rbowed 1111 rollld bi"
dun't'd fi"(JIll tbi"
rlllllr conI' by
ITtljlLftillg rbi"
(Illgil' oftbi" pllllli"
rlirillg tb1VlIgb
tbt: roll~.

BECOMING USEFUL
Apollonius was proud that his theoretical
work was of value for its own sake - 'They
are worthy of acceptance for the sake of the
demonstrations themselves' - and much of
his work had little practical application in
his day, but has since found uses in many
areas of science. His work on the hyperbola
produces a result equivalent to Boyle's law
that defines the action of gases and his
completely original. Apollonius' work
completely replaced all work on conics that
had come before as surely as Euclid's work
had replaced all pre\;ous Greek breometries.
Apollonius describes the derivation and
definition of the curves he names and
considen; the shortest and longcst straight
CURVES, CIR CUSANO CONICS
study of the tangents of an ellipse
(though he did not know the term) is
fundamental to understanding the
movement of the planets and stars as well
as in planning space travel.
1\101"C rball "'-.;JO rbol/.flllld )'MI"S afrer Apolumills
liued, fpau tmud bas brrome n pmcriml
flpplimrioll of bis work 011 CIlrvt'S.
lines that can be drawn from a given point
or pointS on the curve. rn this, he lays all the
groundwork for the definition of curves by
quadratic equations in the Cartesian
coordinate system. Indeed, 1,800 years
later, Rene Descartes tested his analytic
geometry against a genera lization of
97
 I N T H ( ROUNO
Apollonius' theorem relating ro a moving
point and its relation ro fixed lines.
Both the Arab and Renaissance
mathematicians were heavily indebted ro
Apollonius. Though several Arab
mathematicians srudied conics, finding ways
to calculate the art;:as and volumes of figures
derived from conic sections, it was left for
Omar Khayyam to take their study in a new
direction. In using conics in his general
proof of c..'Uhic equations, he anticipated
Descartes ro some degree, bringing
geometry ro hear on algehra (though he
expre~~ed a hope that his successors would
he ahle ro find algebraic solutions ro finding
roots). The rediscovery of Apollonius' work
in the European Renaissance provided the
groundwork for many of the advances
in optics, astronomy, cartography and other
practical sciences.
98
The fablllolis illterior of the Hagill Sophifl ill
[mmblll, forme/iy COllrrlllltillOple: tbe flltllr is lit
by fill/light at 1111 hom, of tbe dilY.
BEGINNING WITH OPTICS
I n one of Apollonius' lost works he
apparently discussed parabolic mirrors and
demonstrated that light reflected off the
inside of a sphere is not reflected ro the
centre of the sphere. Optics was ro become
a major area for the application and
development of work on (.'Urves. lr could
have most starding practical applications,
too. In {.lOOBe, Diodes demonstrated
geometrically that rays of light that are
parallel ro the axis of a paraboloid of
revolution (a solid produced by rotating a
parabola) meet at the focus of the
paraboloid. Archimedes is reported ro have
used this ro set light ro enemy ships from
 CURV(~, CIR CU S AND CONICS

the shore. The focal properties of the ellipse
were used by the architl'Cts of the Hagia
Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople (537)
to make sure that the altar was illuminated
by sun li ght at any hour of the day. Several
Aral) scientist.~ inwstign ted tht: properties of
mirrors mad(' from conic SL'CriOns. Ibn al-
Haytham found the point on a convex
spherical mirror at which an observer would
be ablc to see an object at a gi\'en position
and showed how to design the cu rves
needed for sundials.
The same properties can be applied to
sound - the galleri es in borh the US Capirol
and in St Paul's Cathedral in London are
eonstrueted so that a whisper uttered at one
focus of the ellipsoid gallery can be heard at
the other focus, but nowh~re clse. Even
more recently, satellite dishes and solar
coll cction dishes have used the reflective
propertie.~ of;J parabolic surface to focus the
rays that strike them on to a central receiver
or coll ector. In surgery the same geometry
is exploited to fOclis ultrasound waves on
organs or stones within the body.
Galileo's work on projectiles and Keplcr\
on planetary motion were among the t'a rli (.'St
applications of conics to suhjecrs other than
optics. Kepler found that the Earth moves
around the sun in an dliprical orbit, with tht
sun at one focus of the ellipse.
Later work on conics and curves used
infinitesimal analysis to try to detcmline the
area under curves or their length, but it was
the invention of analytic geomet ry by
Descartes and Fermat in the 17th ct::nlliry
that paved the way for the modern
definition of conics. In stead of dt::riving
conic secti ons by cutting through a cone,
the mathematicians of th e t 7th century and
later defined them with algebraic equations.
as the patb traced out 0 11 a plane by pointS
moving according to a second -degree
equation in twO variabl es. At this point in
our Story; coniL"i dis3ppcar from geometry
an d re-emerge in algebra.

THE PERFECT PENDULUM

The Dutch scientist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens
(1629-95) developed the pendulum clOck after discovering a
new curve, the cyclOid. He discovered that a pendulum released
from any height within a cyclOid bowl will reach the bottom in
preci sely the ~ame time - it doe~ not matter how fa r it has to
travel. Huygens went on to demonstrate properties of other
curves. He use d methods from analytiC geometry and
infinitesimal analysis to discover the lengths of curved lines
and to become the first person to discover the surface area
of part of a solid of revolution called a paraboloid, rormed by
rotating a parabola.

99
 I N T H E ROUNO
Solid geometry
Solid b'"Cometry - the b'eometry of solid,
three-dimensional objt.-'Cts - was needed as
soon as humankind began building anything
more complex thaJl a simple hut (when trial
and error rather than mathematics may
have ~l1fficed). One of the three problems
facing classical mathematicians, the
doublin g of the cube, is a problem of solid
geometry.
Problems in solid geometry relate to
measuring the dimensions or volume of a
three-dimensional shape. The volume
measured need not he of a solid; it is likely
that early uses for solid b'eometry related to
measuring capacities as well as cak-ulating
the dimensions for buildings. Some of the
problems in the Babylonian and Eb'Ylltian
texts concerned cak-ulating the volume of
cellars and pyramids.
100
BASIC SHAPES
Plato identified five rebrular polyhedral
solids; he associated these with the basic
clements which he helieved made up the
phy.:;ical world. These PlatOnic solids are the
pyramid (tetrahedron), cube (he.xahedron),
octahedron, doc\(.-cahedron an d icosahedron.
PlatO claimed that earth was made of cubic
particles, fire of pyramids, air of octahedrons
and water of icosahedrons. He claimed,
the god used [the dodecahedron] for
arranging the constellations on the whole
heaven.' Ll his Eif'JJ1mts, Euclid gives a
thorough account of the PlatOnic solids and
repeats a proof briven by Plato that there are
no more than five regular solids.
B1are rfdl"fillg work all d pyl"tJlIlid. EJ!J'ptiall
bllildny bad to m!cttlate ifr volllllle ill ord.r to
nrqllir£ fbe rigbr tmlOllllf of stolle.
 SO UD GEOMETRY

TETRAHEDRON HEXAHEDRON DR CU8E OCTAHEDRON DODECAHEDRON ICOSAHEDRON

The German astronomer Johannes
Kepler (1571-1630) tricd to associate the
Platonic solids with the known planets and
formed a model of the solar ~"'Ystem in which
the solids were nested within one another.
Although he had to give up the modd,
he did, in thl! process of working on it,
discover twO regular stella ted polyhedra
in 1619. These are formed by extending
the edges, or faces, of polyhedra until
they meet, forming new shapes. Louis
Poinsot discovered a further two in 1809. In
1812, Augustin Cauchy proved that there
were no more regular star polyhedra.
Pilltollic solidr: rbese lUI"C rbe rusie ele1l!mrr rbat
Pinto believed mllde liP rbe pbysim/7.J.1()I-id. fir ji/l"rber
believed Cfmb WtlS millie of l7Ibic parricles,jire of
pyra mitis, ail, ofoctllbedlVlls lind water ofirofilbedlVlls.
Although Plato is credited with first
describing the Platonic solids, they are all
represented on carved stone balls 4,000
years old found in Scotland. At least one of
Kepler's polyhedra was known before he
wrOte about it, too. A stellated polygon is
depicted on the marble floor of the Basilica
of San l\;larco in Venice, Italy, which dates
from the 15th century.

Stdlilud rrgll",r IIIld irreglilm' polybedra ml' {"/"f:ated by eumding rbe flUes of a polybrdroll IIl1tiltbry
illli'l"Sl'ct. Some polybedm prodll{/' 1111111y srellariol/f. otbers very fr.v. Tbere lin '/10 srd"uiolls for 1/ mix.

101
 I N T H ( ROUND

The ftI'olllldplrm for tbe Bari/ica of

S(III J\1(1rco. Vel/ice: (I rtell(lted
polygoll if depimd 011 rbe lIH1rVle
floor dnrillgfiWI! tbe lStb eel/wry.

MEASURING VOLUME
Just as a two-dimensional
polygon can be reduced to a
series of triangles, so a three-
dimensional polyhedron can
often be reduced to rebrular
solids for the purposes of
calculating volume. Methods
for calculating the volume of a
cube, square or triangular
pyramid, cylinder and cone
were known to the Ancient
Egyptians. But the volume of
sha pes that call1lOt he reduced
to any of these is harder to
calculate. Archimedes IS
credited with realizing that
the volume of an irregular
shape can be found by
measuring the volume of
water it displaces, a discovery
that reportedly led him to
leap naked from his hath and
run down the street shouting,
'Eureka!'

THE GOLDEN CROW N

The Roman write r Vitruvius (died c.25BC) told a story in which King Hieron commissioned a
solid gold crown and asked Archimedes to determine whether the crown the jeweller made
was really solid gold. Clearly, Archimedes could not damage the crown to test it. He realized
while in the bath that he could measure the water dis placed by immersing the crown, then
weigh the crown and calculate its density. By comparing this with the known density of gold
he could work ou t whether or not it had been adulterated with a cheaper, less dense metal.

102
 SO U O GEOMtTRY

IYhile 1I1OSt fa'II/OtlSfor his 'Eureka!' 1!!(]I/lmt ill the

batb, Arrhill/eder afro explailled the prillcipkr of tbe
lever, the dn;iCl' UPO" whirb 1I1ecballics is based.

A sphere is a special case of a rehrular

solid as it has no angles, edges or faces.
Archimedes proved that the volume and
surface area of a sphere are nvo-thirds that
of a cylinder the same height and
diameter. The earliest demonstration of
the volume of a sphere, J.1 nr J, was by
the Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi
(429- 500).
for measuring the volume of irregular solids
VOLUME S AND CALCULUS (by immersion), there was little left to
After establishing mathematical methods calculate hut the volume of irrebrular solids
for discovering the volumes of regular and solid conics. These problems were not
polyhedra, or solids that can be broken intn solved until the invention of calculus at the
reb'l.llar polyhedra, and :l practical method end of the 17th century.

211 Chollgzhi 'iJ'as tbe [lI"st to 1I1famre tbe vo/mne of a sphen, bur aim r?"eated a /lew {II/nldar syrre1l1, af
[(]Il11!lf1lHffated ill tbis statile ill Shallgbai.

103
 IN THE ROUNO

Seeing the world in geometry. Perspective geometry is the

For all the theoretical purity of the Greek study of the relationship hetween fibrures
mathematicians, maths comes from and and how they are mapped or represented,
impacn; on our relations with the real world. and hegTIn with the study of shadows cast hy
The developments that had begun with an ohjects and the way items in the distance
interest in rarefied logic, distanced from a ppear to the eye.
real-world applications, led in Renaissance
Europe to a rich cross-fertilization hetween PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
the arn;, sciences and mathematics that The Arab scientist and mathematician Abu
resulted in new wa~ of seeing the world. Ali aI-H asan ihn al-Haytham (c.965-\040)
These, III turn, led back intO new worked with gL'(lmetry to formulate his
mathematical ideas. ideas on optics. He developed some of
The way we see the world - indeed, the Euclid's work, redefining parallel lines, and
universe - around us interested and inspired used conic sections to help III his
geometers for centuries. Not only the exploration of the reflection and retraction
mL'ChaniL"s of how we sec and how light of lighL He arrived at the accurate model of
hehaves, hut the diftk-ultics of representing light rays emanating from an ohject rather
and modelling what we sec has hoth than heing sent out by the observer's eye
henefited from and prompted d(.'Velopmenn; (which was the model adopted by some
scientists). H e descrihed a
pyramid of rays coming from
the ohject, some of which
reach the eye of the
observer. H e went on to
determine the point of
reflection from a plan e or
curved surface, using conic
sections. The work of
al-Haytham came to the
West through Latin
translation and prompted
olle of the greatest
revolutionary events in the
histOry of art - the discovery
of linear perspective in the
ltalian Renaissance.
It was the Florentine
architect and engineer
The Dead Christ byAlldn:a Manregllil (1431- 1506) is il rIIperbearJy Filippo Brunelleschi
eXffnlple of rhe applicatioll of rbr prillciples ofperspective ill llIestem art. (1377-1446) who first

10<
 SU ING T H( WOR LD

rediscovered the architecrural

principle of linear perspective
that had been known to the
Greeks and Romans.
Brundlescbi demonstrated
the principle of perspective in
(vm illustrative panels that
have been lost, but in 1435
his work was ill corpora ted in
Del/a pittlll"tl (011 Paintillg) by
Leon Battista Alberti
(1404-72).
Alberti suggests that a
painting is like a projection of
an image on to a vertical
plane L"Utting through the
pyramid of rays of light at
some point between the
object (the apex of the
pyramid) and the observer's
eye. The painting includes a
'point at infiniry' (now called
a vanishing point) at which
parallel lines in the painting
converb'C·

MAPPIN G THE WORLD

Recording larger-scale
images of the world required
a different ryPt! of application
of geometry. Surveyors used
trigonometry for the new
method of trianb'1.llation that
made accurate maps possible
for the first time.
Triangulation was first
suggested in Europe by the
Flemish mathematician Tbe dome of tbe Catbedml of StlIltfi !lldria del Pian ill Plorwce
Gemma Frisius (1508-55) in (1420- 36) if rbe pillllfu/e of Bnlllellercbi'r m:bievenlfllt; it is brld lip
1533, though crude versions by p,YSYI/JY fI"(Jm rlx weight of tinlbfl"Y.

105
 I N THE ROUN O

J\1elllbnT uf rbe 187-# grogmpbim/ S/Irut')' c(mdlliT

rrial/gli/ariull wurk fir rbe tup ufSllltall l\1ulllltaill
ill Sail Jail CUIIllIy, Culurado. USA.

of triangulation were used in Ancient Egypt

and Greece, and H eron of Alexandria
described a primi tive theodolite in the 1st
cenrury AD.
From each end of a hase line, angJt..-s of
sight to a distant object are mea~l..Ired using
a theodolite. Trigonometric methods then
give the distance to the ohject. By covering
a b'eob'Taphic ~l..Irface with mea~"Ured and
calculated triangles, the entire area can be
mapped. Tht;' first large-scale mapping

A Rmllissallce IrQ/"1d map bawd 011 rbe w,itlllgr uf

Prolmry} Geography. Tbe d17 ufc1II1ugrapby
develuped dralllatically during tbe age uf discuverier.

106
 SEE I NG TH( WO RlO

PTOLEMY AND THE AMERICAS

Though Ptolemy's most famous work was
the Almagest he also wrote a Geography
which remained influential for over a
thousand years. He developed two
projections and introduced lines of latitude
and longitude, though the inaccuracy of
measurements led to considerable errors in
his longitudes. He also overestimated the
extent of the Earth's surface covered by the
Hellenic lands and consequently his
calculated size of the Earth was smaller than
the real thi ng.
The earliest surviving Eu ropean maps
from the Middle Ages are heavily reliant on
Ptolemy'S Geography. When explorers
planned to sail to India by heading west
they would have expected the journey to
be much shorter than it actually was.
Perha ps if Columbus had realized the true
natu re of the undertaking he would not A nJlllflllriciud m1isr's impITssi(}/1 ofCo/lI'Illblls laudillg
have attempted the voyage that led him to ill AlIlenm ill 1492. /-Ie l!!Im have bfl'lI reiirJt:d to
the Americas. srrikr laud aftn- a IOllge/~ thall-e:xpected jOilmry.

proj(."Ct was carried out by \Villehrord van
Roijen Snell (1581 - 1616), who survL'Yed a
stretch of 130 kill (80 mi les) in Holland with
33 triangles. The French government
decided to survey the whole of France,
which rook more than a hundred years to
complete. The British surveyed all of India
hetween 1800 and 1911, discovering Mount
Everest in the process.
From the mid-15th century onwards,
explorers werc discovering and charting
new lands, bcginning with the Portuguese
exploring the African coast. \Vhilc
surveying dea ls in straight lines, the
cartographers who were aiming to record
the laq,rc e.\':]lanses of newly discovered lands
needed a way of representing in twO
dimensions terrains which arc actually
draped over the surface of a sphere. The
method PtOlemy had used in his Geogmpby
(rediscovered in Renaissance Europe) did
not work for the enlarged world. I nstead,
cartographers adopted t he stereographic
projection that astronomers used to portray

107
 IN THE ROUNO

, _ _ _ C.. ntral meridian

G ~at dl ' tol1lon In high

latitude,

hample, of rhumb lin .. .

(dl""'tlon tru .. l>etw .... n
any two points) i ==t=
Equator touche,
cyWnder 11 qllnMr I.
~' tang .. nt

R... sona bly tru .. "'ope,

ond dl'tan<.. wi thin 1S'
0 1 Equ .to r

the sky. But, of course, that depicts the
interior of a hemispherc and the
cartographers needed to represent the
exterior of a sphere. (A stereographic
projt!{~tion projects a sphere on to a flat
plan!;! - a circle - from a projection point
which is then not visibl!;! on the map. Areas
nL':Jr to the projection point ar!;! distOrted).
The mOst successful variant developed
was the Mercator projection, made first by
the Flemish map maker G!;!rardus MercatOr
(1512- 94). H e drL''W the Earth as though
projccred on to a cylind!;!r tangential with
th !;! equator. Parallels and meridims arc
drawn as straight lines spaced to produc!;! an
accurat!;! ratio of latitude to longitude at any
point on the map . \¥hen the cylinder is
A map oflb~ wm1d {lSillg tb~ Mt"I'Cfltm' prtjectioll,
rbuwillg bull' il if dn'iwdfi'om tb~ plVj~Clioll of Ib~
globe 011 W a cylilldn:
unrolled, th!;! flat map is revealed. Although
the projection was useful for navigation, it
distorts areas particularly nl;!ar the poles. A
.MercatOr projt-,crion of the Earth shows
Greenland as approxima rely thl' sam!;! size as
Africa, for !;!xample, whereas in fact the ar!;!a
of Africa is around 14 times that of
Greenland.
AND BACK TO MATH5...
The int!;!nSt! discussion of perspL'Ctivc and
projections fed back intO mathematics,
stimulating discussion of the properties of

PROJECTIVE GEOMETRY
Projective geometry formalizes the principle central to linear perspective in art of showing
parallel lines meeting at a point which represents infinity. It is a non-Euclidean geometry in
that it rejects the fifth axiom (the parallel postulate). Desargues extended the convenient trick
of perspective drawing, taking it off the artist's page and formulating a non-Euclidean space
in which parallel lines actually do meet at infinity. He used this projection to study geometric
figures, including conics.

108

perspective in general. The most significant
Outcome was in the work of Girard
Desarb'lles (1591-1661) which eventually
led to the development of a more rigorous
projL'Ctive gcomerry in the 19th century.
Desargues was a Frcnch mathematician,
architt..,o and artist, a friend of both Rene
Descartes and Pierre de Fermat (1601-65),
the leading mathematicians of his day. He
developed a geometric method for
consrructing perspective imabTCs of objects
Gn"IJrdlls
lvll'1'mror holdi IIg
hir !!,Iobe.
SEEING T H( WOR LO
and ,wOte a highly theoretical text explaining
the geometry of constructing perspectives in
1636. The ellb'Taver Abraham Bosse restated
Desargues' work in 1648 in a more accessible
form, presenting what is now known as
Dcsargues' theorem. This St:ltes that if twO
triangles are siruated in three-dimensional
space so that they can be seen in perspective
from one poinr, then corresponding sides of
the triangles can be extended so that they
intersect, with the points of inrerSL'Ction all
lying on a line. This works as long as no two
corresponding sides are parallel. A
modification of the thL"()rem rakes account of
this. Dcsargues' work was popular for around
50 years, and was read by Pascal (sec pabTC 43)
and Leibniz, but was then larbTCly ignored
until it was rediscovered and published again
in 1864. Both Desargues and Pascal srudied
the properties of figures that were preserved
and those that were distOrted by different
methods of projecrion. For example, a flat
map of a spherical world cannOt accurately
represent hoth distance and shapes.
"
' ....-
Fmm rhe viewy,!!, pDim, V, rhe tl"Itlllgles lilY III
P<""Sf!ective. If rorrerp(Jlldil'!!, ed!!,t!S of rhe rrillng/es alT
n.1mdrd tllltil rhey 1II«t (Be IIIld B'C, ete), rhe poillts
oiillten«tioll, PI, 1'2 alld 1'3, lie ill a m llighr line.
109
 I N THE ROUND

1,1 fldilitiQII ro bi< <J:Q1-k (}II pnyntivi'

!{ff)7llel1J~ PQwe/er u- Ti"f{flHktlllf rhi'm(JS( Euclidea.n 6'Cometry provides liS
illjIlIClIlifl/ wgillt-'fI" i/I birrory. pnming with the tools we need for
rhl' <I·m·lt-killi'tic "/Il?KY rhwn:lII. working with the geometry of
planes - but perfectly flat planes
Th e principles of projective exist in only small or ideal
geometry were rediscovered by environments. We live on a
J ean-Victor Poncclct (1788-1867) spherical Earth, in a universe with
in the early 19th cenrury. Poncc1ct at least three physical dimensions. In
had heen left for dead at representin g the curved
Krasnoy, Russia, in 1812 surface of the Earth, or of
after fighting- 111 the sky as it appears to us,
Napoleon's Russian on a flat piece of paper we
campaign . He was then are necessarily distOrting
('aptured and imprisoned it. Some of these problems
at Saratov, and worked on are addressed by projective
problems of perspective geometry. H owever, as we
and conies while in prison. PONCELET move away from the
Hi s solution to the need perfect, regular curvature
for a modification to of a sphere, more problems
Desargues' theotCm in the case of parallel of geomerry relatin g to curved surfaces
sidt;!S was ro change the narnre of Euclidean emer6'1:: . Though the ancients were aware of
space. POllcclet postulated poinL~ at infinity, difficulties in marrying Euclid's geometry to
each lin e having a point at infinity and curved sur&ces, it was not until the I Yth
parallel lines ha\'ing a point in common at century that mathematicians developed new
infinity. This bet-ame the basis of the new models to address them.
projective geometry. Poncelet ignored
geometric measurements of dist3nees and SPHERICA L G EOM ETRY
angles in order to find other properties of The first non-Euclidean geometry t o
fit,'l.Irt:s which do nOt vary when thL)' are develop, spherical geometry, tackles
projcr_ted . These invoked collinear poinL~ ­ lllt!;ISUremenL~ on the surface of a sphere. It
points which fall on a line in the original is the geometry of the surf:JCc of a sphere.
also fall on a line in the
projection and so me
special ratios between 'It haJ been demonstrated by mathematic; that the surfoce of
distances. Projective the land and water is in its entirety a sphere ... and that any
geometry could be used to plane which passeJ through the centre makeJ at its surface,
further work on conics (since that il, at the Jurface of the Earth and of the lky; great circles.'
all con ic sections can be seen ptolemy, Geography, c.AD150
as projections of a circle).

110
 OT HER WO Rl DS

Usillg spheriC/II gl!llIl1f11-y, 11't radius of the sphere gives the

are ablr to uteaSll/"/' distaltres lcngth of the line over the
011 plrlllt'ts alld 1111)1)/1S with surface.
SWllt dtgree of(Il"Cl/l"Ilry. Some differences
between planar and
One anomaly of spherical gcometry
spherical geometry quickly become
IS immediately obvious. On thc
apparent. A line in surface of a sphere,
spherical geometry is we can define a
the shortest distance shape using
benveen two p·oinrs, juSt only nvo lines (or grcat
as it is in the geometry of circles) think of a
nat planes, but it looks very seb,'lllent of ::m orange. Clearly,
different. A line drawn across the we can't make a shape from only two
surface of a sphere, if continued long straight IUles in a plane. Spherieal triangles
enough, meetS its own heb,rinning, becoming have other special propcrties. The angles
a circle with its centre at the eentre of the always add up to more than 180"; how much
sphere. This is called a geodesic, or great more than 180" is determined by the size of
circle - so a straight line becomes a circle! the triangle and is callcd the spherical excess
All other asp!;!ct'i of planar geomctry are (E). This can be used to calculate the area of
then adapted accordingly - so angles are the triangle:
defined bep,ve!;!n great circles, for instance.
A line on a spherical surface is defined area == E x r'
nOt by its length but by th e angle under
which in; end pOUlts appear when '';'L'wed where r is the radius of the sphere and E is
from the centre of the sphere. This angle is given in radians. This is called Girard's
called the {f/"c angle. It is mually measured in Thcorem after the French mathematician
mditlllS. The arc angle multiplied hy the Albert Girard (1595- 1632).

RADIAN S AND DEGRE.ES

One radian"" degrees; there are 2n radians in a circle,
I*,,,

or n radians on a straight line. Radians were fi rst used as a

measure of angles by the English mathematician Roger
Coates in 1713. He recognized that the radian is a more
natural unit of measure than degrees, though he did not
u~e the name. The term first appears in print in an exam Tb(' OIafl' !lIrfou of all Ol"flllgf

paper set at the Queens College, Belfast in 1873. sl'ff'l1mt if fl sbajlf' bolmdfd
'ry Dilly rwo rtrfligbr IillfS.

111
 IN T H£ ROUND

Early astronomers and surveyors were

working with spheres as they looked at the
sJ..-y and the Earth. They beeallle aware early
on of difficulties with Euclidean geometries
when applied to spheres. However, it took
many centuries for the possibility of
alternative 6>'eomerric rulC!:i to be accepted .
ELLIPTIC AND HYPERBOLI C
GEOMETR IES
Curved surfaces give rise to two non-
Euclidean geomf:'tries. Lines drawn on
curved surfaces do not behave in the same
way as those drawn on a plane, as we have
seen with spherica l geometry. J" l ()st
importantly, Euclid's fifth posrulate does
not hold . In Euclidean planar geometry, twO
lines both drawn perpendicular to a given
line, L, will be parallel. For a curved surhtce
this is nOt true. On an elliptical surface,
there are no such lines - twO lines drawn
perpcndiUllar to a. third line will eventually
intcrSL'C[. A perfectly elliptical .';urface is a
.~pherc and spherical geometry is a special -
the simplest - model of elliptical geometry.
On a hyperholic surface, twO lines drawn
perpendicular to L will diverge. If the
CUl"varure is exactly right, the hyperbolic
surface will he the inside of a sphere, but
'The hypothesis of the acute angle is
absolutely false; because it is repugnant to
the nature of straight lines.'
Saccheri
otherwise it will h~ some vast howl. Clearly,
the reverse of a hyperbolic surface is
elliptical - the outside of a sphere is elliptical
~nd the inside of the sphere is hyperbolic.
REJECTING ALTERNATIVE GEOMETRIE S
That the behaviour of lines on a curved
surface is COntrary to Euclid's rules of
geometry disturbed mathematicians. For
many centuries, thL}' tried to deny all non-
Euclidean geometries. The Italian
mathematician Giov~nn.i Girol~mo
Saccheri (1667- 1733) tried to prove that
rht'}' could not exist, but ended up d(ling the

Threr rill/pie tljtl!{1Yl1IlS n"fPnrminf{ rhr behaviour

oflillff wiTh 11 CQ1II1Ilon perpmdiCII/l1r 171 filCh ofrbr
rhra: I)'per ofgral!lrtry.
A frillnglr tln/wll all tbc
hyperb(J/ic'ill/fllU of II
rllddll' '/(-II/(JII'ifrllrrr rhllt
rhe III/gIn iI/ride 11
njflllglc ill hYflirbolic
geomrlry ClIII I1IId up (0
HYP",bolk: Euclldeln EIHptk: Iffr rbull 180°.

112
 OT HER WOR LDS

equivalent to hyperbolic h"Cometry and that

of the obtuse angle gives elliptical gt..>Qmetry.
Saccheri's work had little impact at the
time he was writing, and its importance was
not recognized until Eugenio Beltrami
rediscovered it in the mid-19th cenrnry.

DAWNING ACCEPTANCE
Hyperbolic geometry re-emerged with the
Jdllor Bo/yair ronlpasser ill tb~ Bloyai MUre/I'IIl, independent work of the H ungarian J anos
Marorvdrdrbely. Romallin (wbrn bf died). Bolyai (1802-60) and the Russian Nikolai
lvanovieh LobaehL'Vski (1792- 1856) around
opposite, demonstrating the possibility of 1830. Bolyai published in German and
alternative geometries and deriving some of Lohachevski in Russian; it was nOt until
the principles of hyperbolic geometry. His Lohaehevski published in German, too, that
work apparently drew on writinb'S of the his work came to wider attention. The great
Iranian mathematician Omar Khayyam German mathematician Carl Friedrich
(1048- 1131), though he may have Gauss claimed to Bolyai that he had already
developed his arguments independently. discovered most of what Bolyai rt..'Vealed
Saecheri took as his starting point a
parallelogram proposed by Omar Khayyam. A rtllrtlf ofJdllor Bolylli fllld
The parJllelob'Tam is formed from a pair of bir fa/bel; Fm·kllr, afro II ilI~lI­
parallel lines, with sides drawn between klllr<1J111!!fllbmlflliriflll,1:.'/;o
them, perpendicular to the nvo lines. (Ill illlTrllcud bir rOil [r(Jm all
normal planar gL>Qmetry this looks like a ertrly agr.
reb'1llar rectangle.) l ie then considered three
possibilities: that the internal angles are 90°,
less than 90° (acute) or more than 90°
(ohtuse). Although it looks pretty obvious
that they are 90°, his aim was to prove that
they could nOt be anything else, and SO
support the fifth posrnlate. It turned out that
these alternate hypotheses were not as
absurd as Saecheri had hoped. His reasoning
for refusing the other nvo possibilities
was nOt sufficiently rigorous and,
though he rejected them, he did
nOt disprove them. It emerged
over time that the case of the
acute angle gives a system

UlllJl:.1 113
ttl!t till'
 I N THE ROUND

CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS <1777- 1855)

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a child prooigy, his ideas. In fact, Gauss's personal diaries
born to uneducated, impoverished parents suggest that on several occasions he came
in Germany. He had an amazing capacity for up with ideas many years and even decades
mental arithmetic and claimed to be able to before others published them, but did
calculate logarithms in his head more quickly nothing with them himself.
than he could look them up in a table.
Gauss mad£> great advances in The GalifS- lVt-b''1·1fIOlllllm'llr ill Giittillgm,
mathematics and its applications in C"/"fared by (ad Fffliilllllld /-Iarfzr,· in 1899.
astronomy, statistics, earth sciences and
surveying. He produced several important
theorems and proofs in many areas, and his
work on curvature underpinned Einstein's
theory of relativity. Working with his
physics professor Wilhelm Weber, he
studied the earth's magnetiC field,
dev£>loping methods that were still used
until the second half of the 20th century.
The pair also constructed the first
electromagnetic telegraph in 1833. Gauss's
claim to have worked out hyperbolic
geometry before Solyai placed a strain on
relations between the two, since Solyai
considered that Gauss was trying to steal

when he published in 1832, hut Euclidean geometry. The work of

had not him!ielf publici zed it. Lobachevski and Bolyai had
This was possibly true, and little impact until Gauss's ideas
hoth Lobachevski and Bolyai were puhlished after his death
had links with Gauss that in IH55.
could have gi\ren them Gauss suggested treating
insights into thoughts hyperbolic and elliptical
conmined in his teaching and
correspondence. [n this case, A pDl·n·ait ofNiko/fli /vmlOvich
Gauss would haw been the first Lobamwski. Ht spellt most of bir wrter
to develop a consistent, nOI1- rts 1/ pmfessor ar KnWIl UlI1c'ffriry.

, 1<

surfacf$ as 'spaces', since although thL)' c.xist
in three dimensions they actually have only
twO dimensions and on ly two \'ilriables are
needed to specifY a point on them. H e
showed that a surface could be described
entirely with reference to distances and
angles measured on it, and without giving
information about its placcment in three-
dimensional space.
RIEMANN AND IRREGULAR CURVES
Although Bol yai and Lobachevski had
demonstrated that a set of alternative
methods for working with hyperbolic
sur&ces was feasible, there was no model
equivalent to Euclid's planes, lin es and
points for dealing with the geometry of
curved sur&ces. Such a model was provided
by the Italian EUb"t:nio Beltrami (1835-99)
in 1868. lmponantly, he demonstrated that
hyperbolic geometry was consistent if
A rumpllw' gmpbir sb(T;J ,illg rb~ rlirvatlllT of rpare
[n~ared by a b1iU"k bok. Tbe rlirvalllrc of.<ptIre-rime
was €Stablisbed by Einsteill]- rbem) of ndativity.
OT HER WO RlDS
Euclidean gL'Ollletry is consistent. Beltrami
developed spatial models which are now
ca ll ed the pseudospherc, Poincare disc,
Klein model and the Poincare half-plane.
On the Poincare disc, distances at the
edges are larger than distances near the
centre, though this is nOt apparent as the
disc curves away from the viewer. In
Escher's picture, 'Circle Limit Ill ', the
figures arc the same size allover the sur&ce.
The way that the Mercator map projL'Ction
distorts the size of cowltries near the poles
is similar - Greenland looks larger than it is,
for example - but on a Poincare disc the
distortion is the other way, with distances
seeming smaller than they an:. The shortest
distance between twO points 011 the ed!,'l: of
a Poincare disc is an arc of a circle drawn at
right-angles from the boundary of the disc.
Similarly,
the centre of a hyperbolic circle is not in its
middle:
 IN THE ROUND

German Bernhard Riemann

(1816-66) extended hyperbolic 'The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you
geometry ro work with surfaces have sprung from the soil of expen"menral physics, and
that do nOt have uniform therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth
curvature. H e dcveloped a space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away
system for describing the into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will
curvature at any point on a preserve an independent reality'
surface in space using only ten Hermann Minkowski, 1908
numbers . Riemann geomctry
involves postulating higher
dimensions (i.e., dimensions beyond the be twisted into shapes which appear to be
three familiar, physieal dimensions). He three-dimensional ohjects, producing
began with a concept of II-dimensional curious anomalies that have no distinct
spacf;!, and used calculus to provide inside or outside .
geodesics for any cun'ed surface. His work The simplest example of this idea is the
underpins much of modern physics. .M ohius srrip, easily made by talcing a strip
including Einstein's theory of relativity. of paper, twisting it once and gluin g the
The attempts to prove non-Euclidean ends together. The strip has (lnly <)Ill' side -
geometries led to greater rigour III you can run a finger over the whole . .l.lrface,
scrutinizing the Elr1l1wts. The German both side.~ or
the original pa.per strip, in a
mathematician Moritz Pasch (UH3-1930) continuous movement.
saw the need for conceptS, axiom.~ and The KJein bottle is an c.xtension of this
logical deductions based on these axioms to principle requiring :J further dimension.
underpin the new geometries as well as old Although tht' bottle is necessarily drawn
mathematics. This contributed ro the drive, int ersecting irs own surface, as it is
led by David Hilbert at the start of the 10th
eenrury, to axiom:uize all of mathematics
and provide a firm foundation in proof for
even the most seemingly obvious
deductions (sec page 199).

INSIDE OUT?
Curved surfaces form the basis of the
branch of mathematics called topology. lr
became one of the most important areas of
development in m:uhematics in the middle
of the 10th century (1925- 1975). Although,
as Gauss and Riemann showed, they c.xist in A Miibills ship. Thr Vis/litl deception m:"tUm by SlId)
II-dimensional space they have only two sbapa - is it F.J:O- or rhru-diJ/lC/lsiollal? - fan/IY rbe
dimensiolls of thejr own. Surfaces can even bartY of rbe l);1»-k of "rtisr M.e. £reb" (IS98- 19 72) .

116
 OT HER WOR LDS

EIN STEIN, RIEMANN

AND THE SPACE-TIME
CONTINUUM
The general t heory of relativity
postulated by Albert Einstein
(1879~1955) uses the
concepts of Riemann
geometry and an extra
dimension, making a four-
dimensional space called
space-time_ (Space-time was
first suggested by Hermann
Minkowski (1864~1909),

following the publication of

Einstein's special theory of
relativity in 1905_) In general
relativity, space-time is
curved, with the degree of
curvature increasing close to
massive bodies_ Curvatu re is
produced by the interaction of
mass-energy and momentum
producing the phenomenon
we know as gravity_ Thus
Einstein's theory replaces the
'force' of gravity familiar from Follawillg IHillhm:ski's lend, Albert Eillsteill added a follrlh
Newtonian mechanics with dill!<'IIrioll tv the 7:.r,w/ds of1l1atbe1l1atics alld gro1l1etJ)' with bis
multi-dimen sional, non- tbeorJ ofspaa-tillle.
Euclidean geometry.
This cu rvatu re, and t he principle of At the moment of an eclipse, a star would
relativity, was proved in 1919 by appear to be in slightly the wrong place
observations of an ecli pse. Einstein because of this distortion. Measurements
predicted that light rays would be distorted made by Sir Arthur Eddington (1882~ 1944)
by the cu rvatu re of space produced by the in Principe Island, Gulf of Guinea, proved
gravity of a nearby star or planet. that this was indeed the case.

117
 IN TH£ ROU ND

flATLAND
The novelill Flatland: A Romance of Many to convince the sphere that more
Dimensions w ritten and illustrated by Edwin dimensions might exist, but he won't be
Abbott Abbott in 1884 slltirized the social persuaded. It becomes a criminal offence
hierarchy of Victorian Britain in a to suggest in Flatland that a three-
mathematical tale. The narrlltor, a square, dimensional world is possibl e.
occupies a two-dimensional world, In another dream, the square i~

Flatland. He dreams that he visits a one- introduced to Pointland and again

dimensional world, no success
- 0 . . _ ... .......... . _ _ ... ... •
lineland, but cannot persullding the ruler
convirn:e the ruler that
~~-:::~ there of the existence
life in two dimensions
~...c..::;¥.2Z"A.;;;yzj of altemative worlds.
is possible. The square
~~ .... :.~ -\-

-..;~ ~'i1'~
is visited by 1I sphere, Tirll'-pagf i11l1rtmtioll
but can't conceive of a __ I\ROM~ci~ .....:. froll! Flatland, sbOllrilig
_.t- 0 ' M~NV DuiilN~IOfoI"y .",,";';..
three- di men,>i ona I -, 1111 llll' plllt:,·s rbe fq llill"f
worl d until he visits it. ---
....9_ - --
_~_
visits ill bis dl"ffllll.
The squMe then tries

moddled mathematically it is curVt'd of impossible surfuces and structures. The

through four dimen sions and ha s no Penrose triangle, first drawn by the Swedish
intersectio n. The in side becomes th e artist Oscar Reurc.rs\·ard in 1934, was
outside seam l l!.~sl y. A Klein bottl e can he popularized by th e mathematician Roger
dissected to give twO N16bius strips. Penrose in the 1950s. He called it
The Dutch artist M. C. Escher drew 'impossibility in its purest form'.
several scenes whjch played with the ideas
MOVING ON
Impossihle geometri es, it
TRIVIA turned o ut, are nOt so
The name 'Kl ein bottle' is a misinterpretation of the impossible after all , and thc
German Kleinsche Fldche ('Klein surface'), taken as Kleinsche fact that wc can't visuali ze
Flasche ('Klein bottle'). The name has stuck (even in .-.omcthing doesn 't mean that
German) and severlll glass-blowers have made literal 'Klein it can't exist". As with
bottles', though necessarily with an intersection. There is 1I mapping three-dimensional
display 01 these in the Science Museum in london. space to flat planes, all that is
needed is a l.."'Onsistent and

11 8
 OT HE R WOR LDS

Tb~ impossible mallgle ill fur( I'errb, IVesrem

Australifl. Tbe frrtl((lIn' if fieri/filly disjointed (It rbe A mathematician named Klein
rap, fllIIl btlrbem pboragmpbedfrom one of rbe rwo Thought the MObius band was divine.
rpotr fivm wbieb it IT Mfigned ra be rUII. Said he: 'If you glue
The edges of two,
thorough method. The way these You'll get a weird bottle like mine.'
representations work, espL'Cially tor spaces Anonymous limerick
in more than three dimensions, is by
way of a coordinate system. This can remarkable work of twO Frenchmen
be explored and manipulated in that century brought them
mathematically using algebra. tOgether and provided the tools
Alb'Chra and geometry dL'vcloped needed for Riemann and other
in parallel, with considerable non-Euclidean geometries
cross-fertilization, until the to be formulated.
17th century_ Then the

119
CHAPTERS

The
MAGIC
FORMULA

Algebra is familiar to most people in the fonn

of equations that must be solved, either
equations set as exercises at school or equations
fonned to model problems in economics,
science or some other discipline.
The representation of unknown quantities
by symbols, which is fundamental to algebra,
evolved slowly. Although Ancient Egyptian and
Sumerian mathematicians dealt with problems
that involved unknown quantities, they did not
express them in the fonn of equations as we do
now. Indeed, not until the late 16th century did
the familiar form of an equation evolve. We
now have many ways of solving equations,
including the use of graphs. This has been
made possible by the crowning achievement of
Rene Descartes, who brought together
geometry and algebra in the system of
Cartesian coordinates which allows an equation
to be plotted as a graph.

Ar rbis al/If/e, rbe Tawn' if Babel defier rbe Tides ofGod alld KerJlIletry,
 TH( MAG IC fOR M ULA

Algebra in the ancient world

I t is impossible to disentangle simple
algebra from geometry, for it was in
problems relating to twO- and three-
dimensional gt..>Qmetry that algebraic
questions first surfaced. Early on, specific,
practical problems in algebra were neither
systematized nor represented in a way
which we would now recognize as algebra -
yet they provide th e origins of algebra as it
was later fOnlmlated.

FIELDS AND CELLARS

Babylonian clay tablets III the British
Museum include a number of problems
which would now be formulated as
quadratic or cubic equations. These rdate
to building projects and involve working
with areas and \'Olumes.
Some problt:ms related IU dividing up
an area in partS with different proportions. The lIlnhod for solvillg rrmllltfllll'oflS N11/an011S

1t is easy to see how a problem in area can IIlnlled aftl'l' Carl Friedrich Gauss bad bel'll tlsed
lead to a quadratic equation. ;11 rhl' East 2.000 JtYlrs ulrlin:

, to write and tackle cubi c equations is in the

, clay tablet nearly 4,000 years old. Such
2
Here the area of the larger (enclosing)
rectangle is
(a + 2)(a + 1) '" a' + 3a + 2
Similarly, cubic equations can be derived
from Babylonian problems relating to
digging cellars. The earliest known attempt
form of 36 problems about construction in a
problems were expressed in words by both
the Babylonians and Egyptians, and by
mathematicians for many centuries
afterwards - for example 'the len gth of a
room is the sa me as it.~ width plus 1 cubit; it.~
height is the same as its length le~"S 1 cubit.'
The Babylonians did not attempt any
general rul~ or methods of treatment for
problems of these types. They dealt only
with the specifies of each problem and seem
to have had no grasp of a general algorithm
that could help them solve all problems of a
simi lar type. The Ancient Egyptians, tOO,

122
 ALGEBRA I N TH( ANCI£NT WOR lO

solved practical problems that would now yielded more than one solution he sropped
be exprcssed as linear or quadratic after arriving at the first - (..'Ven if there were
equations, but again without rcC()urse to an infinite llumber of solutions (as for an
any formal notation and without equation of the type x - y '" 3).
recognizing them as equations. H e developed a method for representing
The Chinese text The Nille OJllpfers (2nd equations which was less cumbersome than
to bt cenmry Be) includes a chapter on writing them um in wurds, bur was ~rill nOt
soh~ng simulcmeous linear equations for two comparable with modern methods. A~ the
to seven unknowns. They wen' solved using a Greck~ used thi:' letters of their alphab~t for
counting board or :;l.Irnce and could include numbers, thert: were no recognizable
neg'ative coefficients. The description of ,"ymbuL~ immediately ava.ilahle to represent
c'luations with negative coefficients is the varia bles. \Ve ean usc x, y, a, b, m, n and so
earli e.~t known use of negative numbers. The 011. to stand for variables and mmtants
method used is now known in the \Ve~t as because we have separate symbo ls for
Gmssiall elimination after Carl Friedrich numbers, and SO an e:"llression such as 2x is
G:I\.l~S who used it 2,000 years later. unamhiguous. Diophanrus adopted some
variants on Greek letters, and used symhols
FROM GEOMf.TRYTOWARDS ALGEBRA to indicate squaring and cubing . His ~YS[CIl]
1"n the middle of thc 3rd century AD, the of ablm..,'Viations was:m intermediary st:lge
Hellenistic mathematician Diophanrus of between the purely discursive explanation
Alexandria developed new methods for uf pro hi ems and the purely symholic in usc
so h~n g proLk'IJl.~ that would now be sho ....'T\ now. It also g"Jve him the opportunity, not
as linear and 'luadtatic equations. H.is work, .~een ur exploited before, of dealing in
ArifbllletiCtl (of which only part has higher power.~ than mbl'.s. Some of his
survived), cOIlt'Jins a number of algebraic problems include a notation that means
cquations and methods for solving them. 'square-square' or 'cube-cube', indicating
Diophantus applied his methods ro the powers of 4 and 9 respl.'Ctively.
problems in hand, but did not e.xtend them 1n addition, Diophanrus had no concept
to general solutions. Like the earlier of an equality - of twO balanced expressions
Greeks, hc dismissed any solutions that between which parts could be moved or on
were less than zero, ami whcn an equation which idcntic-al operations could be carried
(JUt. Nor did Di ophantu s

deal with more than one

INDIAN QUADRATI CS unknown at a time. H i:'
An ancient Indian text, one of the Sul ba sutras written by always sought a way to
Baudhayana around the 8th century Be, fi rst cites and then convert a sC(:(md unknown
solves quadra tic equations of the form ax' '" c and axl + bx into a.n expression built
= c. Tht>..'ie occurred in the context of building altars, and around the first. So, for
50 relate to a practi[al problem in three dimensions. example, in a problem that
ca ll s for two numbers whose
 n'"'"" " ~OR M UtA
sum is 10 and the sum of whose squares
is 108. D iophantlls would not write, as
we may. x + y = 10; x1 + y.' '" 108, but
might tCflll them (x + IU) and (x - 10),
the second equation then becoming (x +
lOy +(x - 1W :20S.
D I OPHANTINE EQUATION S
Diophantine equations arc those III
which all the numh~rs involved,
including those in the solutions, are
whole numbers (which can be positive
Of negative) . They fall into three
categories: rhost': with no solution,
rhose with a fixed numher of
solutions and those with infinitely
many solutions.
For e.x:lmple. the equation
2x+2y:l
has no solutions, because ml'n"! arc no
values for x and y that are whole numbers
that can give the amwer t (the sum of two
even numbers is always even).
The equation x - }' = 7 has illfinitel~'
many solutions as we can continue to pick
larger and larger values of x and y.
The equation 4x '" S has only one
solution: x = 2.
Diophantine equations ;Ire useful for
dealing with qu:mtities of obje('t~ that
cannot be divided - such as numbers of
p(.'Ople. So, for instance, if there is a choice
of (~ ars to rake 24 people on ~ trip, some of
whieh c~rry four and some of which carry
six passengers, and ~ll must be full, we could
write ~ Dioph~ntine equation, since the
only useful solutions assib'll whol", numbers
of people to whole numbers of cars:
,2<
ORDERS OF EQUATION
Polynomial equations are those that contain a
series of terms, each of which has a variable
raised to any power, multiplied by a constant
(ordinary number). For example in the
following equation
the first term consists of "II! X 1, the second 01
Xl X 2 and the last the constant B (or XO X .8).
Mathematicians refer to polynomial equations
as bei ng of the first order, se(ond order and
so on depending on the highest power
they contain.
So a quadratic equation such as that above
is called a second-arder equation; an equation
including a cubed term (x~ is a third· order
equation.
4x + 6y '" 24
(This has the additional requirement that
the values of x and y muSt both be positive.)
Maths problems of the toll owing type USt'
Diopbantine equations: ';I hoy has spent 96
cents on ~"Weets and bought 4 chocolate
mice,2 lollipops and a chocolate bar. \Vh~t
is the cost of each item?'
Diophantine equations of the form
ax + by '" c
~relin(.":lr equ~tions (a graph dr~wn of the
equ~tion would he a straight line). Another
Diophantine equation,
 A LGEBRA I N THE AN CI £ N T WO RlO

relates to Pythagoras' Theorem and GOING BEYOND THE CUBE

produces Pythagorean triplets (e.g., 3,4,5:
Y+16=25).
AJthough Diophantine equations arc
named after Diophanm~, he was not the
tlrst to work on them. The lndi~n Sulb~
surras deal with several Diophantine
cqu~tions. H owcvl'r, Dioph~nrus differed
m~rkcdly from e~rlicr Indian and
B~hylonian m~them~ricians in th~t his
probll'ms were purely thcoreric~l - he was
nOt concerned with building altars, digging
cellars or taxi ng grain, and his numbers do
nOt relate to qU~J]riries in the re~ l world. He
was also concerned only with precise
answers using whole numbers. It is probably
for this laSt rcason that there arc few cubic
equations 111 D i()ph~nrus' A1"itlJ1llfficn .
Although t he questions that
Dioph~ntuS deals with m~y
nOt look unu:,·ually difficult,
his ~ppro~ch w~s gcnuint::ly
innov~rive and has h~d ~
lasting effect on la ter
m~thematici ans. Indeed, it
was while trying to
generalize ~ problem r~ised
by DiophanUls, to divide a square
into twO squares, that Fermat arrived ~t
his famous Last Theorem (see page 140).
VYhile Diophanrus had a form of notation
for powers gn:ater than three he did nOt
make any great use of it. Another
AJcx~ndrine, P~ppus of Al ex~ndria,
appro~ched the issue, hut ~gain did not
come to grips with it. He was rhe first to
st~te cle~rl y that l ine~r, or first-order,
~ l gebr~ic problems rcl~te to a single line or
one dimension; secon d-order problems
relate to two dimensions or areas, so arc
planar, and third-order prohlems rd~tc to
three dimensions or volu mes, so arc solid.
Investigating the properties of eurves
defined by IUles in planes and voluml's, he
came up a!,rainSt the possibility of equations
of a higher order. However, he dismissed it
since 'there is nOt anything contained by
more th~n three dimensions'.
Dioph~nrus w~s toO much
wedded to algehra and
Pappus to !,'"l'omerry for either
of them to make th~
conceptu~l J e~p into algebr~ic
geometry, though they both
approached the jumpulg-off
point. It was one of Pappus'
geometric problems of lines and loci
that eventually led Descartes to invent
algebraic gt.."Ometry in the 17th century.

OIlSERVAT IO DOMINI PETRI DE FER ,\ IAT

ubum autcIIl in duos mbos, aut' lJuldratoquadratum in duos quadr.Jtoqulldrgto!i & gCllcr-.llitcr null am
C in infinitum ult'r-J quaur.JtunJ potest,1tcm in duos eiusdcm nominis f~ s ~Sl diuidcrc mius rei
dClllonstrationcm mir.Jbilcm "'ln~ dctexl. Hanc marginis cxiguit':ls non ClpcrcL

Trnllslnt;oll of F tTm nt 's Las t Tbeol"e'm : It is illlpom'ble for (/ ruile to be the SIIW of mlo wiles, n follrrh
power to br tbe srn" of r.1'O fOlln/; PIY'':I(TY, or;/1 g meral for n/~Y III11flbt r Ibn! is n ptr':II:I· gf"Cnul" dlflll tbe
seco"d ro be tbe SIWI of r.:·o like PO".l'I'1Y. I bttVt dirtov/' I"(tI n n·lliy ultl/7.'fllo/ls demO/lSm/rioll oftbis propositioll
Ihar tbis 'lIl1lrgill is too 1!mTIF.IJ to fOllfnill.

125
 11'"'." " ~OR M UlA

Al-MAMUN'S DREAM
The caliph al-Mamun (786- 833) is klid to have
had a dream in which Aristotle appeared to
him. As a consequence, the caliph ordered
translations to be made of all the Greek texts
that could be found. The Arabs had an uneasy
peace with the Byzantine empire and
negotiated the acquisition of texts through a
series of treaties. Under al-Mamun's caliphate
and at his House of Wisdom, complete versions
of Euclid's Elemenfs and Ptolemy's Almagest
were translated, among others.

A 15th-eel/wry palmillg ojAriswrlc. AI-M'Uf/lmr

uigll 'was /loted for his bilge effurlY ill rbe tn/llslarioll
ofGn'l'k pbilosopby ami scimu.

The birth of algebra Al JABR WA-l-MuQABALA

With the development of the Indo-Arabic
number system and the adoption of zero,
something approaching modern algebra
hecIme possible. The Arab mathematicians,
in drOlwing tOgcther the best of Indian and
Greek mOlthematics and extending it, laid
th e foundations of a proper algebrOlic system
and even gave us the term 'algebra'. They
found algehra more Olppealing than the
Greeks had done and there were also
spurs to its development wi thin their own
society. The incrcdibly complex hws of
inheritance, for example, made the
cakuhtion of proportions and fractions a
tedious necessity. On tOp of that, the
constant need to find the direction of
Mecca made algebra, like geometry, a tOol
worth developing.
Th e word 'algehra' is derived from the title
of ~ tre~tise written by the Persi~n
m~thematician ~nd member o f the House of
Wisdom, Muhammad ibn Mus~ al-
Khwarizmi, (""ailed AI-Kifab al-Jabr wa'l-
!Wllf/aba/a CThc lA)mpendious Book on
Calcuhtion by Completion ~lld Balancing').
This presented systematic methods for
solving lineOlr and quadratic equations. The
modern word 'algorithm' comes from the
name '~I-Khwarizmi', too. In his hook he
gives methods for solving equations of the
types ax" = bx, ~x' = c, bx = c, ~x' + hx = c,
~x" + c = bx, ~nd hx + c = ax' (in modem
notation). Like D ioph~ntus, he only
considered whole numbers in equations ~nd
their solutions; he had the addition~1
requirement that the numbers must also be

126
 "T HE BIRT11 O F A LGEB RA

Olllfir Kbayya1l1 ,HIS also rt>spollsibll' fm· tbl' n'lm711 of

fbI' Pl'lYiall colmdar. His Jilla/i (almdflr is tbl' bam-
of rbflt still ill IISC ruM)' ill Im ll fllld Ajgballisrflll.

positive, while Diophanrus allowed neg'Jtiw

numbers. Al-Khwarizmi wrOte out all
problems and solutions in words and had no
symbolic nOtation. Ironically, since his work
is credited with introducing Hindu-Arabic
numeral s to Europe, he even wrOte th e
numbers our in full.
Afi:l;'r showing how to tackle equations,
al-Khwarizmi went on to usc Euclid's work
to provide demonstrations using b'l!ometry.
Euclid's propositions were entirely
geometric, and al-Khwarizmi was th l;' first
to apply them to quadratic equations. The
method he developed, of systematizing the

GHIYAS AD-DIN ABU Al-FATH OMAR IBN IBRAHIM KHAYYAM NISHABURI (1048- 11 3 1)
Omar Khayyam was a mathematician, empi re. His Treatise on Demonstration of
astronomer and poet born in Iran, probably Problems of Algebra (1070) set out the basic
to a family of tEfit-makers. He lived most of his principles of algebra and was responsible for
life on a modest pension provided by a friend the transmission of the Arab work on algebra
who became grand vizier to the Seljukid to Europe. He worked on the tri angular
arrangement of numbers known as
Pascal's triangle and is sometimes
considered the originator of
algebraic geometry, which uses
geometry to find solutions to
algebraic equations.

A 19rb-cmrmy ElIglisb tmlls/arioll of

01l1ar KbIlJJII'I11's collectioll offolir-lilll'
pol'lllS, rbl' Rubaya!:. A11111J PI'Tsiall
scbo/ars wt?·e alro f!OI'ts.

127
 II '"'"" " fOR M U L A

(a+ b)" == a"+na""b + n(n-l )a""'b' + n(n-l )(n_2)a1>lb' + n(n-l )(n.2)(n_3)a""'b 4 + + nab,," 1+ b"
I 1x2 lx2x3 1x2x3x4

cases and then applying a geometrical
solution, was adopred by later Arah
math ematicians and perfected by Omar
Khayyam (5(,C below). Al-Khwarizmi's work
stands for algchra as Euclid's Elcmwts did
for gl.'Olllcrry, and remained the clearest and
best dCllll'ntary n"Camlcnt until modern
times.
Omar Khayyam followed a similar
procedure TO al-Khwarizmi, using Greek
geometric work on conic sections to
demonstrate his solutions to cubic (third-
order) equations. Omar Khayyam produecd
general solutions for cubit: equations where
the Indian mathematicians had worked only
with speci fi c L':lSCS. In 13th-century China,
Zhu Shijie developed .~o lutjon s for cubic
eq uations without reference to Omar
Khayyam's work.
Tbe njlltltion s/J(T'':'S hlr.lJ 10 jill/I 1be cOI'ffidm1:i tllIIl
vfII7t1bks for tilly iXlMlld.." billominl c:tpn:ssioll of
tbe /01"111 (a -+ b)".
had been studied in fndia by Pin gala
(5th-3rd century Be), though I'lll ly
fragments of his work survive in a bter
commentary. Another Arah mathematician,
Abu Bakr ibn Ahhammad ibn OIl Husayn al-
Karaji (c. 953-1029), had also worked on it
and is credi ted with being the first to derive
the binomial theorem (sec above):
The Indian mathematician Bhattotpala
(c. 1068) wrOte Out the triangle up to row 16.
The triangle provides a quick '\"Jy of
c.\:panding expressions .~uch as (x -+ y)\ since
all that i.~ needed is to take the coefficienL~
from (in this ca.5e) lin e 3 (since it is a third-
order equation), giving the result:

SHAPES, NUMBERS AND EQUATIONS lx' -+ 3x'y + 3xy + l y'.

In Pascal's triangle, each numIH.:,r is the sum
of the twO numbers above it. The pattern
forms the binomial coefficient series . In
[ran, it is call ed Khayyam's triangle and in
China Yang Hui '~ trianglc after the Chine!iC
mathematician Yang Hui (1238-98) who
also worked on it.
MOVING AWAY FROM AREAS
Although geometry provided good methods
of prm'ing OIlb'Cbraic solutions, it was as
algebra moved away from the restrictions of
rcal-world gL'Ometry that the. idea of an
abstract equati on, relating to numbers
rather than measures or quantities, heCllllc

2 1 'Whoever thinks algebra iJ a trick in obtaining unknawns ha!

3 3 thought it in vain. No attention !hould be paid to the fact
4 6 4 1 that algebra and geometry are different in appearance.
Algebra! are geometric facts which are proved. '
Before Omar Khayyam Omar Khayyam
wrOte on P:Jscal's triangle, it

'28
 THt HI.TIl Of ALeUtR""

.-/11 iUIIJtr'llliOll jivlII lkSClll1tS'

"Ibe \"or!{l ill "i!·hicb hi R1rknLfI
his Ibrorit'f QlI light. /br fl'llS/'S,
biQlogy IIIIl/mlllly otlll'l'lrJpia.

possible. The Arab

mathc nmticians were
willing to treat
(:ommensurah le a nd
incommensurable n Ul1lbc~
alongside Ollt' anothe r, and
to 1l1lX ma gnitudes 111
different dimensi()ns, both
of which the Grech were
unwilling to do.
Combined with the
J-I illd u~AT"dbic number
sysrem and the acccptance
of zero, this :l llowed
algebra to move fo rwards
;lIld away from its root.. in
pr:I(.:tical b'Comctry. When
Om:!r Khayyam and :ll ~
Khwa rizmi had recourse to
geo metry to demonstrate
their algebraic results they
were not im3gining their
algebraic prob le ms III

Ic rm.<; of lengths, areas and

volumes but using
geometry theoretically as a
tool to represent algellraic
problems .
This relation ship
between the two,
d eveloped O\'e r the next
500 years, resulted
D
cvcntually in the :l nalytic
" 1,, illllmmiOl/ sllowiug tbe III OVfllftlll of ob)rcu, from D crC1II11!J' geometry of Dcscartes and
PrilKiplcs of Philosophy. FcrmaL

129
 THE M AG IC ~ORMU t A
Writing equations
Omar Khayyam died in 1131 ,lIld already
Arab mathematics was in decline. Scholars
from the Arab world were to make few
further contributions in the field. Luckily, at
the .'lame rime that political and religious
groups were fracturing the Arab cultural
world, the in tellectual spi rit was
reawakening in Europe. Durin g the 12th
cen tury Gerard of Cremona translated 87
work<; of Greek aJld Arab scholarship into
Latin, working at Toledo. These included
Ptolemy's Aimogrsf, Euclid's EirJllwfs and
al-Khwarizmi's Aigrbm. In England, Robert
of Chester translated al-Khwarizmi in 1145
and Adclard of Bath translated Euclid's
Ehmf'llts in 1142.
After centuries spent recovering :md
cQllso lidating earlier learning, EutQpean
mathematicians hegan to make their own
cOlltribution to the dL'Velopment of algebra.
Gennany wa.~ the foms of th ese new
developmcntS in the 16th century. Perhaps
th e most important of the Ill'W German
works on algebra was Ari,IJlJletica illfegm by
Michael Stifd (L".1487- 1567). He allowed
the use of neg-ative coefficient<; in quadratic
equations and as a consequence reduced the
various types of quadratic to a single form.
H e introduced negative powers, tOO, b';\1ng
and SO on. Even so, he did not allow
negative roots in c(Juarions and referred to
negative numhers as f1//"/J/rri absllrdi. l-re was
similarly distrustful of irrational numbers,
which he said are 'hidden under some SOrt
of cloud of infinitude' . He proposed using a
single Ictter to denote an unknown quantity,
130
repeating th e letter for Ilowers of the
numher - so if c is the unknown, cc is C and
ccc is c' .
TOWARDS A NOTATION FOR
EQUATIONS
Algebra without the ~l'mbols we use now
was {:umbcrsome and long-\\1nded. Yet the
modem notation is a Inte arrival on the
scene. In Italy, the symbols li and iiI came to
be used for plus and minus as abbreviations
for the words phi (more) and mmo (less). But
Latin was full of abbreviations for words
and groups of letters that are wrirren
repeatedly and this was not partieularly
original. The introduction of arithmetical
operatOrs - ~ymhoL~ showing [he type of
eomputation to carry (Jut - did not begin
until the hue 15th century.
The first symhols tQ be used were + ~nd
- , though originally they were to show a
surp lus and a de6cit 1Il warehouse
quantities. They soon t()()k on their mmll'm
role as arithmetic operators. They werl' first
printed in a book by Johan \iVidmann (bom
c.1460), one of severa l German
mathematicians who published on algehr:l
in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Even after the dc'Vclopment of symbols,
many mathcmaticians continued to follow
the rhetorieal model, writing our the
prob lems th ey were posing and solvin g as
discursive text with little or no re<:ourse to
~"ymboli c abbreviation (synmpation).
Although vVcstem maths did nOt have a
thorough and consistent symholic algebra
until the 17th century, the wcstem part of
the l~lamic world used symbolic notation in
14th-century comm entaries intended for
teaching.
 WRITI N G EQUATIONS

ROBERT RECORDE (1510-58)

Robert Recorde was born in Wales and wanted to make mathematic~ as accessible
taught mathematics at the
Universities of Oxford and
-:;";;;;:-1
r
as possible. Most of his works were
written in the form of dialogues
Cam bridge. He trained in between a master and a student. In
medicine and was private 1551 he published an abridged
physician to Edward VI and version of Euclid's Elements, making
then Mary I. He was also the text available in English for the
Controller of the Royal Mint. first time. He first used the equals
Recorde re-established sign, though using much longer
mathematics in
when the country had ,..r._..
England, lines than we do now. It took 100
years before the sign was

not seen a for 200

mathematidan :~,:~~~~~~~~~J~universaIlY accepted
alternative notations. above
years. He explained
everything in careful /11 1558 R~rolrk "i:.'ar
detail, in steps that iJ//pris/.m~d flr/ailillg ro PIlY
were easy to follow £J ,000 libel cbm ges. He died
and in English, as he 'CC.D...__~ ill prisull rbe Sllllle yo·m:

S BOL DAn SOURC

+ (plus) 1489 Johan Widmann, Germany,
• (minus) Rechnung auf allen Kauffmanschaften .
.J (square root) 1525 Christoff Rudolff, Germany, Die Coss .
'" (equals) 1557 Robert Recorde, England,
The Whetstone of Witte.
x (multiply) 1618 William Oughtred, England, in an appendix
to Edward Wright's t ranslation of John
Napier's Descriptio.
a, b, c for known 1637 Rene Descartes, France,
quantities (constants) Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa
x, y, z for unknown raison et chercher la verite dans les sciences.
quantities (variables)
+ (divide) 1659 Johann Rahn (or Rhonius), Germany,
Teutsche Algebra.
 TH E MAG IC fORMU LA

can be imagined, was nOt

well pleased and the twO
'/ will sette as J doe often in waorke use, a paire of parol/e/es,
or Gemowe lines of one /engthe, thus: ==, bicause noe, 2. hattled for ten years owr
thynges, can be moore equal/e, ' Cardano's disclosure.
Robert Recorde Tirtaglia had hoped to rcmin
the revelation of the cubic to
publish as rhe crowning
THE BEGINNIN G O F MODE RN MATHS? achievement of his career. (T.1rtaglia had,
For all the importance of Stifel's Aritbmetiftl previously, published the findings of others
illfegm, it was to be superseded within the without acknowledging his own debt, which
year. In 1545 a work appeared that was so may reduce our sympathy for him a little.)
revolutionary in ItS eentral concept that Cardano was a little more open-minded
some people have taken it to mark the start with rebrard ro negative numbers than most
of the modern period in mathematics. In of his predecesson>. Althoubrb be JUSt about
An magllfl, Gerolamo Cardano (see panel entertained the possibility of a negative
opposite) explained how to solve cubic rOOt, he dismissed it as being 'as subtle as it
(third- order) and even. quartic (fourth- is useless'.
order) e(luations . However, it was not a Cardano's hook represented the greateSt
straightforward triumph of individual advance in algebra since the Babylonians
genius. The solution to mbiL"S had probably hlld discovered how to so lve quadratic
been discovered by Scipione del Ferro equations by completin g the square.
(/:".1465- 1526), a professor of Although it was of no pracrical use ~
m:lthcmatics at the University of indeed, the solution of cubic~ by
Bologna. On his death, he appro.ximation by
passed the information to :t Jamshid al-Kashi (1380-1429)
student, AntOnio Maria Fior. was more useful than Cardano's
Either from Fior or working method - it stim ulated further
independently, Niccolo development of algehra and toOk
Tartaglia (c.I 500-57) the subject beyond the realm of the
discovered the physical world. If quartil'S could
disclosed it to Carda no, on he solved, then why not tifrb-
condition that he did not reveal order equatiOJlS, sixth-order
it. Cardano promptly published it.
H e did, admittedly, own that he Ir sums likdy tbar
had a clue from Tarmglia. H e CO'o/llmo Cm'ilflllo
also acknowledbTCd that the /;e!lefited fi"flm fbI' w/)rk
solution of the quartic had (lJld ideas of olbl'J'
heen by his amanuensis, 'II1arbmfflricillllf;1I bis
Ludovico Ferrari grolllldbrraitillg book
(1522---65). Tartaglia, as An m3gLl3 (/5-15).

132
 WIIITI NC EQUATIONS

GEROlAMO (ARDANO <150 1-76)

Bom in Pavia, Italy, Gerolamo Cardano was
the ill~itimate child of Fazio Cardano, a
friend of leonardo da Vinci. His mother
-~ ......,,-., . ..
~

IJ~"'''''''''''''''
. . ·e:", ....... ,,"""
tried to abort him, and his three siblings ,....J.'P/III ~ ••
_".f<~.w __
died of plague. After ~ome difficulties in . . ,., Q I"
being accepted, he trained as a doctor and ...... ~ ...... If."
~". I'N
was the first to describe ty phoid. He
became professor of medicine at Pavia in
1543 and at Bologna in 1562.
As well as being a physician, Cardano
was one of the foremost mathematicians of C(mllll/o'y honJSropr oIJfYlIY Cb,.llr rhm got him 11110
his day. His publication of solutions to cubic fO 1Il11ch NUl/bit'. A c01l1n ill rbt' ll.fCWdllllf Lib}"a ellll

and quartic equations in Ars mogno secured be mm (/f /111 inraprl'flltloll of the ftll}" of Ilnblehelll.
his place in history, but he also published 'whik the Uti}" GaSIor 11/ Grmilli pr.·ilim'd v/olmer
the first syst ematic work on probabili ty a 7:.·irhill Chrirts lifo.
hundred yeal"5 before Pa~cal and Fermat.
Cardano's private life was colourful, and poisoning his wife. In 1570, Cardano was
certainly fed into his interest in probability. He accused of heresy and imprisoned for several
was always short of money and months for calculating the horoscope of lesus
supplemented his income by gambling and Chri st. As a consequence he lost his
playing chess. His treatment of probability, professo rship at Bologna and the right to
which he applied to gaming, includes a publish books. He died on the day he had
Sfftion on how to cheat effectively. previously predicted, but he might have aided
life wasn't easy for Cardano. His the fulfilment of his prophecy by committing
favourite son was executed in 1560 for suicide .

equati ons and even high er? Suddenly,
algehraic prohJcm.~ no longer needed to
relate to real-wo rld problems in th e
dimensions we recognize. Furth er
dimensions, for the ~"ake of mathematics,
could he postulated, at lea st in theory.
VVhile further dimensions were dearly
absurd to Cardano's contemporarie~, of
interest only in the arena of fantastic
math ematit~Jl l'xplor:ltioll, they would come
into their own several centuries later. By
opening up the possihility of al!,Tt'bra and
algebraic geometry c.xtending into more
than three dimensions, Cardano laid the
foundations for Riemann b'Comerries and
the four-dimensional space-time continuum
with which Einstein would remodel the
universe (sec pages 115- 9).

IB
 THE MAGIC ~OftMULA
Algebra comes into its own
The gulden age o f European algehr:t which
began with C:trdano's publication of the
solution of cubics and quarrics,
encompassed the legitimization of negative
and complex numbers, the dL'Vclopment of
the Cartesian coordinate system, the
marriage of algchra and geomerry in
analytic geometry as wdl as considerabk
steps towards the development of integral
calculus.
British mathematieians t:ame into their
own again after a long ahscnce from the
scene. but did n ot displace thc Italian.
German and Polish mathematician.~. Some
of these men wcre now writing in their OW11
languages rather than Latin.
TO WARDS COMPLEX NUMBERS
Soon after the Cardano-l artaglia s() luti ~)!l
of cubics ami quarties appeared, the ftali:m
mathematician Ra£1d Bomhdli (c.l526-72)
hcc:tme the first to introduce complex
numbers on t o the scene. (Complex
numhers arc those that involvc the .~quare
roOt of -I , i.) Wor king wi th tube roots, he
developed equations whieh used im,lginary
roOts as a Stn6'C in deriving final soluti ons
that are real numbers. H e descrihed it as 'a
wi ld thought' and it did nOt in f:tct help in
his computations, but it did signa l the
impo]"[an ce that ('omplex num bers were to
have fur algebra in the furure.
DEALING WITH NUMBERS AND
NOTATION
D espite all their advances, the algebraists
and rrigunometcrs of the 16th century still
did not have a widely used nOtation for
deci mal fractions. \Vhen Rhetieus beg:lll his
,3<>
most ambitious u·igonometric tables. he
lL~cd triangles with sides of length 10') units
ro attn in the degree of accllracy he wanted
without having to use fractions of any kind.
(lr doesn't matter which unit.~ as he didn't
actually construct the triangles, just
suggc~ted them.)
Fran~"Oi s Viete (see box opposite) was
on ly a part-time mathematician, but made
progress in various fields - arithmetic,
trignnomerry, geometry and, most
impormntiy. aI6'Cbra . He w:ts instmmcntal
in bringing about changes in notation that
mad e furth er progress possible and
promoted the lise of decima l rather than
sexagesimal fractions. Viete's most
important contrihution was in brin6ring
consistent n(lt;lti()n to algebra . TillS enabled
him to develop a syStematic w:ty of thinking
and a new method of working with !,'Cneral
forms of equations. H e adoprcd vowels to
represent unknown quantitie.~ and
consonants to represent known quantities.
H e also showed how to change the form of
equations by multiplyi.ng or di\'irling each
side by th e same maglllrude.. For example,
he showed how to transform the equation
x' + OK= b'x
into
K+OX=b'.
Vifte sti ll did not recognize negative or zero
terms, so he could nOt reduce the number of
possible equations to :t single form in each
ordn. (\Ve have the foml ax1 + Lx + c '" 0 as
the standard foml which can descrihe any
quadratic equation be('""3use, by allo\\~ng a, b

FRANC;:Of S VIETE <1540- 160 3)
Fr an~ois Viete was a French mathematician
and Huguenot 5ympathizer. Trained in law,
he became a member of the Breton
parliament, then of the King's Council
serving Henri III and Henri IV. He was
proficient at deciphering secret messages
intercepted by the French. Indeed, he was so
successful that the Spanish accused him of
being in league with the devil, complaining
to the Pope that the French were using black
magic to help them win the war.
r)r c to be negative or zero, it covers such
possibi lities a$ x' - 7 '" 0, where b is 0 and c
is negative.)
It is impos.~iblc to c;Jvcrst:1tc the
importance of good, L"Qnsistcnt notation for
the prob'TC,5S o f algebra. Yet this was not
View's only achievement. H e arrived at
formulae for multiple angles, was the first
person to usc the law of tangents (although
he did nOt publish it) and the first to sce that
trigonometry ~ould he used to solve cubic
equations that could nOt be reduced . Hc
also produced the first thL'Orctical precisc
numerical expression for IT:
', r I,. x
~. \
I I ". j
I
!"-rJ1 lo; !'~
I I g o
I I
""! ""!
I
! '"
Although the method is nOt new, it w~s
the first time the infinite scries had been
cxprl."ised ana lytically. Algebra and
trigonometry were mO\~ng morc and more
ALG£BR A COMB INTO ITS OWN
Viete made great advances in several
fields of mathematics, but always working
in his spare time. Being weal thy, he printed
numerous of his papers at his own expense.
For a period of nearly six years in the
second half of the 15805, he was out of
favour at court and concentrated almost
eXClusively on mathematics. In the 12th
century, al-Tusi had found the same
method of approximating roots of
equations as that discovered by Viete.
tcl\vards a concern with the infinite. - both
the infinitely large md the infinitely s m~ 1 1.
Progress :lccelerated as a clutch of
talented mathem~ticiallS applied themselves
ro developing algehr~ in irs new directions.
French mathematician Albert Girard
recognizcci that the number of roots an
equation has depends QIl the Qrder Qf the
equation - SO a second-order equation has
twO rOOts, a third-order equation has three
rOOtS, and so on. The hreakthrough came
because he was sufficiently open-minded to
allow negative and imaginary numhers in
roots. Englishman Thomas Harriot
(1560-1611) introduced the symbols> and
< for greater than and less than . H e was also
the first proper mathemiltician to set fQot
on American soil, having been sent in 1585
by Sir Walter Raleigh as a surveyor. More
influential than Viete in promQting the
adoption of decimal fractions was the
Flemish mathem:ltician Simon SW\'in
(154H-1620). He :llso urged the :ldQption of
m
 THE MAG IC ~ORMU t A

a decimOlI system of wcights

and meOlsures, though this 'There are enough legitimate things to work on withow the
was nOt ro happen for need to get busy on uncertain matter.'
another 2UU years. Stevin Simon Stevin, T585
adopted a nOtation for
powers which is similar to
that in usc now, llSing a number in a circle matter of choice wh ether one solved a
raised ahow the lin e to show the power - so problem by geometric or 3lgebr~ic
5° means 5!. H e even used fr3ctional methods. B}' bri nging trigonometry to bea r
powers to show rnOL~, so 51!! means ~5. But on algrhra he was widening the scope of the
Stevin was primarily a practical subject and promoting its alliancc wi th
mOlthematitian, and he dismissed any geometry. Vien: was in fact one. of rhe first
considerOltion of complex numbers. people to view mathematics as a wlified
The eon6dence with which the best whole ratht!r than di fferent branche.s to he
mOlrnematicians now approaehcd algebra - considered separately.
and the distance ir had travelled from its fn 15 72, Bombelli 's Aigebm h::td
roolS in real-world gL'Ometrie problems in presentcd many geometric problems which
up TO three dimensions - is dear in the he solved algebrairally. For eX3mple, he ga\'C
public challenge set in 1593 by the Bcl gi:m :dgebraic so lutions of cubics and then
lllahematician Adri3en nn Roomen showed gL'Oll1 erric demon strations of his
(1561-1615) to solve a 45 th-order equation: solutions. (H owL'Ver, this part of hi s trc3tise
was nor included in the printed edition and
- 3795xl + 45x = K didn't appear llntil \929.) Seventy-five yl'Olrs
later, D escartes would t3.kc gcomctric
No CI) llcept of 45 dimensions was need&!. problcms, convcrt them to an albrebraic form
Viete. rose to the ch::tllen gc and solved the to simpli!)' them as far 3S possible, then
equation when all , - - - - -- - -- - - , rerum to geometry for a final
amh3ssador to the court of L ' A L G E BRA solution. bl this, his analytic
H enri rv said that there was o JI ERA g~ometrv., he comil leted a

_.
Ili""." I . . ... ""..,....
no Frenchman capable of it. (..
J.~~;-~..:.;,rl- jOW"llcy begun by Apollonius

TH E APPROACH TO
ALGEBRAIC GEO METRY
VietC'S so lution related to
c:.o=~:'-='"

--.
......
~.j,.60 ... ')J,.,..""IWiIf.
when he showed th::tt conic
sec tio n.~
quadratic equations.
cou ld rCllreSent

sines and he used hi s Tbe rith paKf to II / 579 edition of

multipl e-a ngle fo nnula e to
derive it. In pro~'i din g a
consistent symbo li c systrm
for representin g- algeb rai c
equations. he also made ir a
BOll1belli's Algebra. 11JI'fim
rb,·u vclllmrr of all i//tmded jiill
I N BOLOGNA.
ll'f71: published in 1572. Bombrll;
,.,.a...-; ~ _ .
IoII)IX1Wf,
... 100. .. .. "'T-. ilird rbilt J'I'I/I" befor.: be could
filla/i'U rb" lim r-.JJO vollflmr.

136

GIANTS OF THE 17TH CENTURY
From the first half of the 17th
century there was
communication hdween
mathem:ltician.~ than there
had bcen at any time
since Plaro'.~ Academy. In
many countries,
mathematical societies
grew up alongside the
other learned societies
then appearing. I..n Britain,
the mathematical socicty had
the enticing name of the
'lnvisible College'. in Francc,
communicati on was further facilitated by
Father Marin J'1ersenne, wh() corresponded
with hundreds of mathematicians, scit::IItists
and other learned men, acting as ~ conduit
for knowledge and a sort of early
networking guru. Thi s meant that there
were fewer incidences of mathematicians
privately developing work that was then lost
and had no impact on others. Mersenne
facilitated disagreement as much as
anything, but at least no olle was in any
doubt ahout what everyone else was doing.
By a process of steady accretion, the
fowldatiolls of modern mathematics were
laid. Two men, hoth French, were to playa
leading role in that process.
Neither of th e two toweri ng figure.~ of
the age was a profession~l mathematician.
Rene Descartes (see page 138) was a minor
scion of the French nobility who is more
ramou~ as ,1 phi losopher than as a
mathematician. Hi s explan ati on of his
system of analytic geometry is provided in
a.n appendix to hi s philosophical text,
Discollrse 011 M ftbod, as a demonstration of
AlGURA COMf.S INTO ITS OWN
!H1II11I !\1t"l"SI'IIIIt", "-"bQ fin;' ir ay bis
CbH'yfil/lI dll'J' frJ disst'"millllte
rrimrific ImfT,,:,'kdge.
how he u~d reason to
arnve at hi s resu lt...
Pi erre de Femm (set
page 139) was ~ bwyer
3nd then 3 councillor
who pursued his interest
in mathemHics in his
spare time. Yet his ability
rivalled that of Descartes.
MARRYIN G ALGEBRA AND
GEOMETRY
D esca rtes fOlllld neitber geometry nor
algebra entirely satisfactory 3nd set abour
taking the best of both. By seeing the
quan titi es in his equations as line !iCgments,
Descartes avoided 3ny conceptual diffi culty
in working with higher-order equ~tions and
de3ling with equatio ns that did nOt h3ve
cxpressions of the sam!.' order on L'ach side.
F or cxample, the Greeks could not 3llow 3n
equ3tion such 3$ / + bx = a bec3use the two
parts on the left-h3nd side are considered
areas and that on the right is considered a
lin e; an area and a line cannOt be considered
equal.
Deseartes refin ed Viete's notation, using
letters nC3r th e Start of the alphabet for
known quantities (a, b, c) and letters near
the end of the alph3bet for unknowns (x, )',
z) . H e u~ed r3ised numbers to indicatl:~
powers 3nd used the .~ymbo l s for the
arithmetical opcr3tors which we sti ll use.
Only his symbol for equ3lity W3S different
as he had nOt 3dopted Rohert Recorde's p3ir
of pa rallcllin!.'s.
137
 TH( MAGIC fORMULA
RENE DESCARTES ( 1596-1650)
Rene Descartes was born in Tourraine,
France. His mother died when he was only
a year old. His father remarried and moved
away, leaving the infant Descartes in the
care of relatives. He trained in law, taking
his degree in 1616, and then travelled. It
was while he was in Bohemia in 1619 that
he developed analytic geometry.
Descartes shared some views and
practices of the mys tical group th e
Rosicrucians. like their full followers, he
moved around a good deal, always lived
alone and practised medicine without
charge, but he rejected their mystical
beliefs. He promoted religious tolerance
and championed the use of reason in his
scientific and philosophical writings.
Descartes has been Gliled the father of
modern philosophy for his contention,
13'
propounded in his Discourse on Method,
that knowledge must be acquired through
reasoning. He maintained that sensory
perceptions are not a reliable guide to the
world around us and Glnnot be depended
upon to yield true information. His famous
dictum, ' I think, therefore I am', is part of
his demonstration of the few things which
can be relied upon - the exist ence of the
thinking mind, of God and of the material
world. The dichotomy between mind and
body was another of his preoccupations.
His belief in free will was paramount; he
adopted the anti-Calvinist view that
salvation can be earned through the
operation of free will and does not depend
only on God's grace.
Descartes was always Sickly and, when
Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to
her court to teach her philosophy, and
demanded that he get up at Sam each day,
he quickly succumbed to the Scandinavian
winter and died.
All mgmvillg
QjQIlf'm
Gor;ltilltl of
Swedm <l,buse
Iln1'f'aS07ltlble
df"Tlltllllir fIJI"
;llsh'lIctioll by
rbe gnat
pbilofOpber
precipitmed
D(!sCllrtes'demb.
 Al GEB RA COM U INTO ITS OWN

PIERRE D E FERMAT ( 160 1-65)

Born in the Basque region, Fermat studied
law and later mathematics. He developed
independently of Descartes the principles
of using a coordinate system to define the
positions of points.
Fermat worked extensively on curves,
developing a method for measuring the
area under a curve that is similar to integral
calculus, and to generalized definitions of
common parabolas. He worked extensively,
too, on the theory of numbers and
corresponded with Blaise Pascal on this
subject. This was his only contact with
other mathematicians. He was a senetive
recluse, who generally communicated only
with Marin Mersenne (see page 137).
Fermat was the most productive
mathematician of his day, but was so All t'IIW·{roll1g of Pierre dr Ft1"'lIlfir t(ltt'll from
reluctant to publish that he gained little UJ/lis Figllier's Vies {Its Savants UlusO"e<;
credit for his work during his lifetime. (,Lives of me GrCJt Scientists), of 1870.

Descartes proposed that the position of
a point in a plane could be identified by
reference to twO intersecting axes, used as
measuring !,ruides, so developing the
coordinate system whieh is now known as
the Cartesian system. For ~ll the familiarity
of his ~Igebraic notation, Descartes'
graphical representations of equations do
nOt all resemble ours, for he never used
negative vnlues of x in his graphs. The
familiar form of a grapb divided into
quadrants by axes that cross at (0,0) was
introduced later by Isaac NewtOn. In
addition, his axes were not always set at
right angles to each other. Dcsc~rtcS
believed that any polynomial t!Xpression in x
and y could he expressed as a curve and
studied using analytic geometry.
At the same time as Descartes was
formulating his analytic geometry, anomer
Frenchman, Pierre de Fermat, was doing
much the same thing. Both arrived at
comparable results independently. Fermat
stressed that any relationship between x and
y defined ~ curve. He recast Apollonius'
work in ~lgebraic terms, ~iming to restOre
some of Apollonius' lost work. Both
Descartes and Fermat proposed using a
 TH( MAGIC ~ORMU l A
third axis to model three-dimensional
curves, but this was not advanced until later
in the 17th century.
Neither Descartes nor Fermat sought to
publicize their work widely. Descartes did
publish his, writing in French so that more
people could under.~tand it, but he did not
explain in great detail and much ofthe work
was impenetrable to many readers. It is not
entirely clear whether Descartes wanted to
exclude pl."ople whom he fclt weren't
sufficiently serious or whether he wanted to
give his readers the plt;'asure of discovery by
making some of the intellectual leaps and
hounds themselves, hut either way it did
little to help the dissemination of his ideas.
Soon, an anonymous introduction was
added to his work to help explain it. In 1649
Frans van Schooten published a Latin
edi tion with explallat01Y commentary.
Fermat was little better at promoting his
work than Descartes, bcing a confirmed
rccluse who refused to puhli sh .
Di ssemination of his ideas during his
lifetime was almost exclusively through the
mediation of Marin Mersenne; indeed,
F ermat puhlished only one of his
,.,
Bl"itifb ll11trbell1n1iciflll AlII/l"f'"dJ Hliler.
7:.·btJ provaJ Pennat's Lart Tbffl/"t'lIl.
if {/ pnJjcrmr tit PrillutQlI IlIIivernty.
fir m:~hYl' tI klligbtbwd ill 2000.
discoveries, the rather obscure
rectification of the scmicubal
p~r~bol~ (a method for
discovering the length of a
curved lin e).
FERMAT'S LAST THEO REM
Fermat is most famous now for
his so-called 'last' or 'great' theorem. H e
noted in the margin of his copy of
Diophantus' Aritbnutial that there arc no
solutions to the equ~tion
for values of n greater th~n 2. He added, 'I
have discovered a truly marvellous proof of
this, whi ch, however, the m ~rgin is not large
enough to cont~in' - and so the proof was
lost ~nd the subsequent search for it taxed
mathematici~ns tor more than 300 years.
Because the problem is so easy to
understand, many people tried to solve it
hefore it was finally mastered by the Engli sh
mathematician Andrew \Viles in 1993.
Wiles proved Fermat's theorem "'~th a
method that uses elli ptical curves . H e had
tried to solve it as a chi ld, as soon as he
h'-'fIrd about it, ~nd continued through his
degree course in mathematics. l ong after
he h~d given up he re~lized that it was
rcl~teJ to his work on curves and remrneJ
to tht: problem again . His proof is highly
t:omplc.x ~nd m~y well nOt be the s~ m e as
that Fennat cl~imed to have found.

The world is never enough
Descartes brought al6rcbra and geometry
together by defining a point by coordinates
and using this to draw graphs from
t'quarions. Ll doing rhis, he pro\~ded rhe
means for a later development of algebraic
geometry into untold new dimensions.
Any two-dimension~l sh~pe c~n be
representcd by giving the coordinates of irs
vertices (corners), e~ch as nl'O numbers.
The principle c~n be extended to three
dimensions easi ly - by gi vin g three
coordinates WI: define a point in three-
dimensional sp~ce. It is easy to work Out the
differences between points, too. Ll a rn·o-
dimensional system, with points (a,b) and
(c,d) wt:' can use Pythagoras' theorem to
work Out the distance betwet:'n the points.
\·Ve im~gine a tri~ngle, with the nvo poinrs
defining the ends of the hypotenuse. The
Icn!,.'1:h of thi s line - the distance henvcen
the points - is then RCc -yaf + (d - b)} We
can e..xtend the s~me formula to thrct:'
dimcnsions: the distance benveen rhe poinL~
(~,b,c) ~nd (d,e,f) is J((d - af + Ce - b)1 + (f-
c»). \Vh~t is there to stop us taking this
further and dealing with distances in four
dimensions, defined by four coordinates?
Or 16 dimcnsions? Or 4,;19 dimcnsions?
We may have a conceptual objection
because \\·c can't visu~lize tour-dimensional
T H { WORLD I S N{V[R ENOUG H
space. stilll css 4'; 1I)-dimensional space, but
mathcmatics is not concerned with whcthcr
we are comtortablt:' with the concepL
\Vhat use is multi-dimensional sp~cc? If
we c~n step back from the problems of
trying to vi~l.Ialize it as a re~ l -wo rld space,
the theoretical space with many dimensions
is actually quite useful. \Vc often dr~w
graphs that plot nvo variables - specd
against time, for e.."(ample, or temper~turc
~gainst growth rate. There arc many
situations in the real world in which fur
more than nvu variables are involved. Ifwt:'
track weather conditions. 0' the
performancc of com panics in a stOck
market, or the mortality rateS III a
population, therc are many variahlt::.~ to take
into account. By allocating values for
perhaps seven, eight or rune variables to
each data point we can envisage, if nt)t
visualize, a map in sev!;!n, t:ight or nine
dimt:nsions from which we can make
measurements and predictions could be
made. 1r isn't necessary to draw thc map -
algebra can take L"'are of the calculations
without that - hut the conceptual sp~ce has
been sug6'Csred in which rhe 6'1"aph t:'xis~.
II is VClJ' bani fen· lIS ro Viflll"h~ Jf/IIU wirb 71lorl!
rball rbl! fom· dilllf'llyiollf <:.r~ hl(Ji,.~ ro I!xist-. bur
IIlgl!brrt eml <:"(II-k ill (fII.¥ /lmllbn· of tiilllf'llfiolls.
,<1
 n'"' "" " ~ORMUtA
THE KOCH SNOWFLAKE
It is even possible to conceive of geometry
in fractional dimensions. A fumolL~ model of
this is the Koch snowflake, dcvdopecl by the
Swedish mathem:nician Niels vOn Koch
(1870-1924). The Koch snowflake is an
example of a fr~ctal, Olle of [he earliest
ddincd.
Draw an equilateral rrianglt!; divide each
side inll) three equal ponions. Remove the
middle portiun from each side, replacing it
with twO sides of another equilateral
triangle the same size as the removed
section . Keep doin g this. The result is a
shape like a snowflake.
lr's po~siblc to carryon doing this an intinitc
number of times. The result is a shape m:lt
has an area defined by rhe formuhl
when s is the me:l.sure of one side of the
original triangle. H owever, the perimeter is
infinite - an infinite perimeter enclo~es a
finite area.
Carrying nut the same operation with a
singlc line segment instead of a triangle, the
resulting lin e approaches a curve as the line
seb'lnents get smaller and small er. The curve
is called a Koch cunrC.
,<2
The nIT'll' has infinite length. The tOml
length increases byonc third at each step and
so the length after n Steps is (:Yo)' . It is not a
one-dimensiona l lin e, as any portion is
unmeasurablc - it is infinitely long. Yet it is
nOt enclosing an area, so it is nOt twO-
dimensional either. It is said to have a fract al
dimcn~ion oflog4/log 3", 1.26, brreater than
the dimension of a line, but less than the
dimension of a t-'l1nre. (A fractal dimension is
also called a Hausdorff dimension after one
of the founders of modem. topolob'Y')
OTHER FRACTALS
A fractal is a structure in which a pattern is
repeated from the large scale to the small
scale, so that lookin g more closely at the
structure re'lt'als the same or simil:lr figun"s.
There arc 1113ny ne3r fractals in Il3turC,
including snowfbkes, trees, gJ laxi t!S and
blood-vessel networks. Fractals are tOO
irregubr to be described using standard
Euclidean geometry and generally ha'le a
Hausdorff dimension which Jiffers from
their normal topological dimension.
rrJctals 3re often produced by space-filling
algorithms. Th e Sierpin ski triangle is an
example. Starting wi th a simple triangle.
make three copies of it at one half the size o f
the original, and place the copies in the
corners of the origin31. Carry on repeating
this step ad illjinitum. The resulting pattern
is identical at any magnification. It was first
described by the Polish m3thematician
Waclaw Sicrpin ski (1881-1%9) in 1915 in
 T H( WOR LD I S N{V( R ENOUG H

the form of a mathematically defined curve

rather than a geometric shape. It has a
Hausdorff dimension of log 3/log 2 "" 1.585.
'Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not
cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is
not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
straight line.'
Benoit Mandel brot

The best known example of a fractal is MOVING ON

the Mandclbrot set, described by the Polish \-\lith fractals, linL'S expand into infinity.
mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (born V\!orking with the graphs produced by
I 924). This is the result of drawing a Dt:Scartes and Fermat, even without the
geometric figure of a set of quadratic added complexity of infinite line lengths,
equations that involve complex numbers. soon produced a need to calculate the areas
Mandelbrot drew togcther earlier under L"Urves and the Icngths of (:lITVed line
examples of fractals, brave them the name segmcnt.~ . The way of dealing with this -
'fractal' and defined their conditions . He and, later, of dealing with fractals - involved
explored their prevalence, both in the looking ru the infinitely small. In the late
natural world and in artificial systems such 17th century, mathematicians finally came to
as economics, and determined that they are grips with the idea of infinity.
a very common model, more frequently
found than the simple structures of Bmoit A/llllddbrol, 'the fiaber offrllctlll g eometry·.
Euclidean geometry. Fracta ls can often
express the 'r ough' quality of the real
universe, whereas Euclidean geometry deaL~
with smoothness, which is rarely found in
nature. Mandelbrot sugbrcsted a model of
the universe in which stars arc fract:llly
distributed. This would solve Olbers'
paradox without the need for a Big Bang,
though it doe... not prL"Clude a Big Bang.
(Olber.;' paradox states that the night sJ..Y' is
dark when it should he bright, since looking
in any direction we should see a star.
Although it was described by the Gernlan
astronomer H einrich Gibers in 1823, itwas
tlrst noted by Kepler.)
Although fracta ls generally begin as
equations, th ey are best realized as
geometric shapes.

,<3
CHAPTER 6

Grasping the
INFINITE

Geometric methods for fmding areas and

volumes are easy enough when dealing with
polygons and solids with straight edges, but
they fall down when confronted with curved
areas and volumes as well as with the even
more challenging spaces and surfaces of
Riemann geometry and fractals.
Early approaches to the problems of
working with irregular shapes and volumes
tried to divide the area or volume into small,
regular parts then add together the parts. The
essential elements of this method were
described by Eudoxus and Archimedes more
than 2,000 years ago, but rigorous development
and application were not possible while
mathematicians still baulkcd at the idea of
infinity. The late 17th century finally saw a
systematic method for dealing with these
problems. As happened with analytic geometry,
the new method - calculus - was developed
simultaneously and independently by two of the
greatest mathematicians of the time.

T he ceaslemnss of the sea if all eiffthly rymbol of the illfillite.

 GRASP ING T HE INfiNITE

Coming to terms
with infinity
Irrational numben;, like it , e and J2, are
infinite series. \Ve can go on refining them
to ever more decimal places, but the task
will never he completed. Both the infinitely
large and the infinitely ~mall (the
infinitesimal) had worried mathematicians
for two millennia. The Greeks disliked
irrational numbers to the point, perhaps, of
murdering l-lippasus for pro\'ing their
existence. Bur III the 17th century
mathematicians nude moves to approach
and eventually embrace the infinite and the
infinitesimal. These concepts and numbers
were finally to hecome useful rather than
JUSt confounding to eXllL'Ctations and beliefs
that were held dear.

AN EARLY PRECUR SOR A/"rbim~des, pictl/red ben' ill nil ollacbnmistir po'Trail
Tbe method Archimedes adopted for ofJ 620,rollfnmt~dp/Ublelllsofillfi"iry(lIIdlilllils
calculating the area of a circl e (and so ;l;birh wolild b~ addn:lYI'd I/etlrly 2,000 yetm·lnrer.
obtaining a value for J't) depended on
drawing polygons inside and outside a circle would converge at that point. As the
and calculating their respective areas. These number of sides tends tOwards infinity, the
gave upper and lower limits for the area of difference between thc area of the polygons
the circle. A greater degree of accuracy \\':lS and the area of the circle tends tOwards zero
achieved by using L'Ver-larger numbers of and the limits coincide.
sides for the bounding and
inscribed polygons. Here
Archimedes encountered THE WEIGHT OF PAPER
two concepts which would Just as Archimedes had found the volum e of an irregular
become hugely important shape by measu ring the volume of water it displaced, so
later - that of limit~ and that Galileo discovered a practical solution to th.e problem of
of infinity, for the perfect finding the area under a curve. In the absence of geometric
area would be given by a and algebraic tools to calculate the area, he would plot his
polygon with infinitely many curve, then cut it out and weigh the paper. By comparing
sides. A circle may indeed be the weight with the weigh t of a pie(e of paper of known
called a polygon with infinite area, he could work out the area of his curve.
sides, SO the twO polygons

'"

The possibility of working out :m area
or volume by dividing a fib'1lre into a very
large number of very thin slices was not Ilt.-'W
to Archimedes. Democritus had rejected it
200 years earlier as he could not work
around his objection to the 10brical difficulty
that, if the slices are infinitely thin, there is
no difference henveen them, so every
pyramid becomes a cube. Antiphon
developed the technique into the 'method
of exhaustion' (though that tenn was nOt
used until 1647) and Eudoxus made it
rigorous. The principle was to rdate the
A 19rb-cmrmy wgravillg of Delllocrillls wirb straigbr edgl'.
a!lI1pflfS alld globe.
COM ING TO fiRMS WITH INF IN ITY
area to bediscovered to another area, which
was easier to c-ah::ulate, and prove tiNt that
the unknown area is not b'Teater than the
known area and then that it is nOt smaller
than the known area (so the)' arc equal}. It is
a non-constructive method of proof, since
the answer must be known before the proof
can be used.
In the 17th c:cnrury, when mathematicians
finally became more comfortable thinking
about the infinite and the infinitesimal, the
method finally came into its own with
proper albTCbraic formulation and emerged
as integral calculus. This could
not happen until analytic
bTCometry had been dt.-'Vdoped
and a rigorous understanding of
limits had emerged.
STEPS IN THE RI GHT
DIRECTION
1n the second half of the 16th
century, the great rush of
development In science and
meehanit's brought new
incentives for calculation with
areas, volumes and properties
such as velocity. The German
scientist Johannes Kepler
(1571 - 1630) and the Flemish
engineer Simon Stc'~n (sec page
18) both worked on calculating
the areas of irregular shapes by
dividing them into very thin
slices and both approached the
problem from a practical point of
view with a specific problem in
mind. Stcvin used the technique
to address the problem of
t-alculating the centre of b'Tavity
 GRASPING TH E INfiNITE
of a solid object. He inscribed parallelograms
inside a triangle to find the median on which
the centre of gr:l\~ty would lie.
Kepler had an altogether more
interesting question . "''hen paying for wine
by the barrel, the price was calculated
according ro hoW" full the barrel was. BIlt
this was measured with 3 dipstick and rook
no 3ccount of the vcrtic31 curvature of the
barrel. Only 3t the point when the barrel
W3S e.X3Ctly full or h3lf-full did the dipstick
give 3n accurate measure of the volume,
since the barrel is wider in the middle than
at the top or bottom. If a barrel was a
qU:lrter full (in depth), it cont:lined less than
a quarter of a full h:lrrcl and Kepler would
be cheated if he p:lid :l quarter the price of a
full barreL He proposed cutting the barrel
into infinitely thin circular slices :lnd adding
'[The infinite and infinitesimal] transcend our
finite understanding, the former on account
of their magnitude, the latter because of their
smallness; imagine what they are when
combined. '
Galileo, 1638
'"
up thcir :lreas as a method of calcuhting the
true volume. In fact, he also needed to
measure the :lreas under curved paths for
his work on astronomy - but the wine barrel
presents 3 more compelling problem.
Galileo stated his intention of writing 3
treatise on the infinite, but if he ever did sO
it has not survived. Instead there are
passages that relate to calculating are:lS and
volumes by reference to infinity and
infinitesimals, but Galileo still grappled
with the str:lnge logic of these concepts.
Perhaps his mOst interesting
observation, and one that looked forward
to the dt.-'Vclopment of set theory in the
19th century, W:lS tha eaeh integer can be
squ:lred, so, since there is an infinite
number of integers, there is an
infinite number of squares: 'we muSt say that
there arc 3S many squares as there arc
numbers.' But can the infinite number of
squares be brger than the inflllitc lllrrnberof
integers? He had come dose to recognizing
a feature of infinite sets - that a part of the
set can be equal to the whole set. However,
he backed away from this condusion, saying
inste:ld tha 'the .lttributes "equ:lI",
"h"Tearer" and "less" are nOt applicable to
infinite, but only to finite quantities.'
It W:lS another Julian, Bon3ventura
Calvieri (1598--1647), who drew tob>ether
the work on infinite division from
Archimedes to G:llilw. In 3 text published
in 1635 (though conceived six ye3TS earlier),
he explained his method of 'indi\~sibles'.
He used laborious geometric methods that
were soon superseded, but: achie\'ed an
impressive re~"Ult. He managed sometlling
that was equivalent to the calculus that
would be invented only 50 ye:lrs later.

The emergence of calculus
The invention of cait'ulus was one of the
great turning points in the histOry of
math ematics. It tackled problems that h:ld
taxed mathematician.s for 1,000 years and
opened doors that no one t.-'\'en knew cxistl;'d
bcfore.
A BIT ABOUT CALCULUS
Cait'ulus provides a way of measuring rates
of change and th e effects of change.
('Calculus' is me Latin namc for a small
Stonc used for counting.) It is di \~ded into
twO parts which are the inverse of each other:
differentiation and integration. The
fundamental (hL'Orem of calculus is that
applyingdiffcrentiation to an integral returns
thc original expression, and \~ce vcrS:l.
Both are essentially methods of
approximation, bur aim to use li mits that
make the error involved (the inaccuracy of
the approximation) tend towards zero. The
principle is easicr to understand when
illustrated by an example.
Tln EMUIG£N(( O f CA LCULUS
Calculus IIsed (Q be [filled 'fbe CfI/m/lis'
IlIId today ir is if"rm /lsed 10 sowe
c01l/plicared problems 'iI'bieb algrbra
a/oll e [fI// //0 / dell101:irb.
BACK TO ACHILLES AND THE
TORTOI SE
The paradox of Zeno, in which
Achi ll es em never catch up \\~th
thc tOrtoise if the tOrtoise is
given a head start (scI;' page 78),
can bc expn.:!sscd (bur not solvcd)
using cakulus.
Using d to represcnt the
distance from the starting point
that the tOrtoise has travelled,
and t to represent the amount of time that
has passed, we have a SL'{luence of times :lnd
corresponding distanct:S, tI, 11, tJ. . and dl,
d!, dl .. .. Th e spced at \cvhich the tOrtoise
moves is a function of time and distance,
and gives the r:lte of chan ge in the tortoise's
position. I-li s speed over an interval between
twO times, tI and 11, is given hy:
dl - d l
12 - 11
If after 15 seconds thc tortoise is 3 metres
from the starting block and after 10 SL'{:onds
he is 4 Illetres from the startin g block, his
speed is
4- 3
20-15
or ~
metre per second .
A graph of the tOrtoise's movement
would be a straight line, as the relationship
between disCincc and time is constant:
'"
 GRASP ING T HE INfiNITE
If the tortoise moves a t a steady speed, a
graph of speed against time would he a
straight horizontal line d = 0.2L
0"
, change of speed (acceleration) is given by
o. ,
E 0.1 , at uniform speed .
I• o.,,
0.0
0
, ,
TIme (1) In .e<ond.
EARLY DYNAMICS
The French bishop Nicholas Oresme
discovered c.1361 that the area
under a graph of speed against time
is equal to the distance travelled. In
his conversion of a p roblem in
dynamics to geometry, he was
probably the first to use a coordinate
system outside cartography.
150
The distance covered is the area under the
graph, speed x time, which is easy to
calculate in this instance. The rate of
the slope. In this case, the line is flat, as
there is no acceleration - the tortoise goes
Now assume the tortoise has been given
an electric scooter. Lnstead of a uniform
speed, he now accelerates until the scooter
reaches its tOp speed. The first part of the
speed graph looks like this:
i ~-------------~
/ ~~
/
. ~----------~.~~
J ~----~yC~----~
-----
TIme (t) In serond.
The situ3tion is altogether more complex.
10 find the distance the ronoise has rovered,
we need the are3 under the 6'Taph, but this is
not easy to calculate. To find the accelerntion
at any pa.rticular inst:Inr, we need to mea~urc
the slope of the curve at that point. The first
is solved by integral caklllus ;md the semnd
by differential caklllus.
INTEGRATION
lntegration finds the area under the curve
by drawing a series of infinitesim311y thin
rectangles under the curve 3nd adding
tOgether their areas. h's very similar to
Kepler's slices of wine barrel (sec page 148)
or the slices of pyramid that troubled
Democrirus (see pa6TC 79).
\Ve can make a rough approximation of

the area under the curve by drawing
reetangles so that th e t:urve passes through
the midpoint of the top of (;!:teh rectangle:
/'
/ acceleration at an instant is given by the
,..--"
---
The line cutS off part of the top uf eaeh
rectangle to the left, hut there is a space
under the line tu the right. If the spare bit of
rectangle were flipped over, it wuuld fit the
space pretty well. The smaller the
rectangles, the better the fit to the curve.
7'"
-'
Th e calculated area (the sum of all th e
re("tangles) approaches the true area under
th e L"Urve as the number of rectangles
approaehes infinity. This area is the integral
of the function f (t). Th e expression for th e
integral is written as
where ft and h are the limits we arc working
within (the upper and lower values of t
that bound the area) and 'dt' means a very
small change in time.
Tln EM Ul G£NCE Of CA LCULUS
DIFFERENTIATION
The average acceleration over an interval
of time (on the graph of rime against speed)
is given by the slope of a straight line drawn
between the start and e nd pointS of the
intetv'JI. This line is call ed a secant. The
slope of the curve at thftt instant (or of a
tangent to the curve).
Differential calculus ptO\'ides ft way of
approximating the slopc of the curve by
assuming a very short time interv:l.land
calculating the slope of the secant for that
interv:l.l. (The very short interval is called
L'l.t, 'ddm-t', the Greek capital delta bein g
used to show a small quantity.)
/
secant
./
~
~
------
III rbis ("XI/mph, rhe Stralll is d,.ITi1 ·11 bawl'rli tiliO
/KIll/rf (!II rbe lilll!.
hi tbk t":wmplc, rllt fflllgwl flJl/cbfS rbe l illt III
1/ poml.
The time 1n is a vcry short interval.
Making 1'n sma lkr and s maller producc .~ a
more and more accurate result, though it
151
 GRASP IN G THE IN fttHTE

will never bc quite the same as the slope SEEING THE WAY FORWARD
of the curve because we can't set .6t With the development of analytic geometry,
to zero. However, as .6.t approaches zero, it bet:ame possible to describe movement
the line appr().1ches a perfect match. This algebraically. The Ancient Greek~ had
introduces the concept of the limit: the limit introduccd the idea of a curve as the path
of the function "pprotlcbcJ the required va lue (locus) of a moving point. Algclmic
(the acceleration at an imtant) as L'1t geometry pro \~ded a tool for de~ribing that
approaches zero. This is the process of locus in the form of~n equation, gener.:dizing
differcntiation. about the shapes of the cw·ves produced by
different types of motion and identifYing
NEAR MISSES patterns that had predictive value. For
Fermat's work Oil analytic geometry example, Calvieri noticed that the area tmder
includes a rl'latiollship which is the parabola defined by y '" x\ between 0 to
fundamental to the theory of calculus. " on the x-axis is oJ/ 3. Similarly, for the CUITC
Fermat dealt with finding tanb't!lltS to CUlVes y '" Xl, the corresponding- area is d!/4. [t was
and areas under CUlves. The expressions he nOt then difficult to guess that the general
derived had an ulVerse relationship, yet it formula for the area under a CUlve y '" Xfi is
seems to have escaped his attention, for an-'/(II + I).
there i~ no evidence that he pur.~ u ed it or
tried to e'\llbin it. l EIBNIZ AND NEWTON
Blaise PaSt'al is another who could easily The fundamentals of calculus - both
have taken a final .~tep and di.~covered differentiation ~nd integration - were
calculus. Pascal's interestS in mathemati cs discovered around 1670 independently by
were varied and he flitted
from topic_to topic. H e also
gave up mathematics after he SEKI KOWA OR SEKI TAKAKAZU (1637/42-1708)
underwent a religious Seki Kowa was born in Japan in either 1637 or 1642. He
ecStasy, and he died young- developed a new notation for expressing equati ons up to
two further factors that the fifth degree, using kon;; characters for variables and
contributed to rob him of unknowns. He discovered discriminants, which led him to
the prize that lllight have some re.\ults in differential calculus at around the same time
been his. Pascal came so as Newton and l eibnitz discovered them in Europe. There
close ro discovering calculus is no known communication between the European and
while working on an Japanese mathematidans. (A discriminant is an expression
integration of the sine that shows a relationship between the coeffidents of a
function that L eibniz later polynomial equation. For example, lor the quadrati c ax 2+
wrote that it was reading bx + C, the determinant is b2 - 4ac. Whether the
Pascal\ work that signpostcd discriminant is positive, negative or zero give information
calculus for him. about the nature of the equation and its roots.)

152
 TH E EMUlG£Nn Of CA LCULUS

SIR ISAAC NEWTON <1642-1 727)

Isaac Newton was born prematurely on at Cambridge and could dedicate himself to
Christmas Day in 1642 and was so Sickly his scientific and mathematical work. He
that he was administered the last rites. His discovered that white light is made up of a
father had d ied before his birth and, when spectrum of coloured light, l ormulated his
he was three, his mother left him to be laws of motion which underpin classical
cared for by his grandmother while she mechanics and defined a fo rce which directs
went to live with her new husband. the motion of falling bodies, gravity. His
of his discoveries,
Cambridge, where he studied Phi!osophioe Natllmlis Principia
the classical science required is perhaps
by the curriculum but also most important
read the new works of scientific publication of
Descartes ,nd th' all time.
chemist Robert Boyle. Newton was attracted to
When the university was mystical matters and
closed for two years alchemy. He also had a
because of plague, psychotic intolerance of
Newton worked at other scholars disagreeing
He developed his ideas of with him. He spent years
calculus, which he called isolation, shunning
'fluxions', and a good deal of any possible source of
scientific work, but at this Nr.NOIi -was rlU' firsr /0 conflict. Professional disputes
point none of his work was Tt'lIliu rbar whitt' light could sometimes prompted him to
published. After the plague, I", split iura rbe CQIQlIl"f of burst into tantrums that took
Newton became a professor the sperfTtnl,. the scientific world by storm.

the Engli~h ~t'ientist and mathematician
Isaac: Newron and the German polymath
Gottfried Leibniz (sec page 154).
VVhat both m~n did was to discover a
method for cak-ulating the tangent of a
curve ata sp("cified point on the curve , briven
only the equation defining the L-urve. The
slope of the tan g"Cnt (which defines the line
geometrically) shows the rate of change of
the function (such as the speed of a moving
hody at a particular instlnt). Borh men also
realized that integration is thl' inverse of
this process of differentiation - that
integrating the rcsult of differentiation
leads back to the original function and \~cc
versa . This revealed a surprising
relationship between total values and rates
of chang·l.'.
 GRASP ING THE INfttHTE

The notation one of the benefitS of his (~SC()vcri~ in calculus

was the ability m tackle power series - infinite
sums of multiple power.-; of x, such as

for the expression giving the area under m..

curve y = x1 was adopted by Leihniz hecau~c
hI! Saw it as the sum (indicated by thr
clollbratccl 5, J) of the c.\vn:ssioll, in this c.1.~C
x\ divided into infinitely small segmenlS along
the x-axis (d,,). Newton and Lcibniz stressed
diffcrcnt aspects of calculus and had quite
separate intentions in lLSing it. For Nl'Wtol1,
He de\'Clopcd a calculus of power series,
showing how to differentiate, integrate and
invert them. Lcibniz was morc intere;tcd in
the properties of changing systems and
in summing infinircsimals. His work [reared
continuOllS quantities as though they were

GOTTFRIED WILHELM lEIBNIZ (1646-171 6)

Gottfried leibniz was largely self taught as branch of science called dynamics which is
a child, then entered the university of concemed with the movement of object.'i
leipzig to study law. The university refused and the forces acting upon them, then
him a doc torate because he was too young worked in the 1670s in practical mechanics
and he consequently left the city, and engineering, designing and
never to return. He was many kinds of
awarded his machinery. He is considered
immediately at NLirnberg. the originator of geology
leibniz moved to Paris, after the observations he
and most of his writings made at the mines in the
are in French or latin. He Harz mountains. He was
worked in the service of the fi rst to propose that
several noble families the Earth had initially
during his lifetime,
pursuing his interests in perfected binary notation
mathematics, philosophy and which is at the heart of
many branches of science computer science. HiS' philosophy
~me time. He developed a was optimistic he
calculating machine which Ldblliz. a'rotl" le1IS oflhollSdllds of believed that the world
he presented to the Royal dXIIJ//l7ItS 011 a 7.l .idl" rdllgr of represented the best of all
Society on a visit to SIIljocts {llId IIlw:h ofllis work possible worlds that God
l ondon. He developed the rmlflills IlI/pllMishul to this day. could have created.

IS'
 THE EM ER G ENCE O f CA LCULUS

Zt'IIQ} PlIl¥ldl).Xl'f fellt/'/' dispute over priority and the merits of each
(lI'IHlIId dividillg up mans methods had long-la.~ting repercussions,
COl/nll/lOflS U/m~1I/1'IIr inrl) isolating British maths until the 19th cenrury.
lill] 1Il01lll'llts - a pmhlrm
glossed liver by mlt:-lIllIs. THE IMPACT OF CALCULUS
In srudying falling bodjcs, Galileo (who
discrete, a logical flaw died the year Newtoll was horn) needed to
tbat be and otbers calculate the speed of an object at a
overlooked particular instant in time. For this type of
tbough it was an issue so old problem, differential calculus is the perfect
tbar it was tbe difficulty at 1..J..........w tool. Since the time of NewtOn and Leibniz,
tbe heart of Zeno's paradoxes. calculus has been applied to countless
NewtOn fuiled to publish any of his problems in lllLochanics, ph~ics, astronomy,
findings rdating to calculus until \693, nine economics, social science and many other
years after l.eihniz published. The emlJing fields, revolutionizing ph ysics and briving
new impetus to the
fiuther development of
mathematical tt'Chniques.
CalculllS bas spawned a
whole branch of
mathematics, called
analysis, which deal~ with
continuous change.
In summing a la r!,'t! set
of small quantities,
integration is useful in
problems such as
determining the distance
travelled by a hody
moving at 'l:Irying speed
or calculating the total
fuel consumptioll of :l
vehicle. Differentiation
can be used in such varied
problems as modelling
disease epidemics and
determining the path
an aircraft needs to take
CalclllllS has widl'-nll/gillg pmuiCilI appliCflriolis fIJI" fbI' modrm world. Ir to avoid co ll iding with
rom bl'lpr tv I'ttablirb safr jligbtpathr fin· ain:raft ill 0/11' bllsy skin another.

155
 GRASP IN G TH E INfiNITE

Calculus and beyond

A-lathematicians had never been
comfortable with the concept of infinity
and calculus highlighted this concern. The
Anglican bishop George Berkel ey
(1685- 1753) mad!;! a well-argued rcfutation
of calculus and th.is prompted a productive
debate which led t o the rigorous definition
of limitS and infinity. This ultimately
benefited the development of calculus and
enabled analysis to grow our of it.
Berkeley's objection was not fully
answered for morc than a hundred years. A
further century la ter, the 10brician Abraham
Robinson (i 918-7 4) finally showed that the
idea of the infinitesimal is lo gicall y
consistent and that infinitcsimals can be BirbQP Berkeley T<'spandffi ro -;rblll be SiTlJ.lliS IIx
considered a kind of number. lIIull"l7//illillg Qfl"f/igio// by /If/tural pbilaropby (jJf
Analysis deals with continuous change wbirb co/mitIS ,~'ns II key p1l11) ill The Analyst (1734).
and with processes that have emerged from
.~tudying it, such as limitS, differentiation irrational lin e segment.'), the procedure
and integration. In particular, never terminated, becoming an infinite
differentiation is one of the principal t001.~ process. Euclid used this property to tCSt
of analysis. Relating rates of change to irrationality.
present values, it is possible - at least in A similar willingness to ignore th e
thL'O'1' - to predict future behaviours. This logical diffinllries of infinity and
puts analysis at th!;! heart of many modelling infinitcsimals (or lack of rigour in applying
and predictive activities, from weather such logic) led NewtOn and Leibniz to
forecasting to epidemiology, from fud ge calculus. They treated reality as both
astronomy to fluid mechanks. discrete and continuous at the same time,
depending on quantities that were so tiny
USING INFINITY they could wink out of exiStence when
A~ long ago as th!;! time of Ancient Greece, convenient, or could be u:.;ed to put a Stop to
infinity had been employed
in mathematics, despite the
difficulty of such a concept. 'And what are these Fluxions? .. They are neither finite
Euclid used an algorithm to quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing.
find the greatest common May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?'
divisor of IT pair 0 f numbers. George Berkeley, 1734
If he applied it to a pair of

1S6
 CALCULUS AND BEYON~

infinity. However, the results achieved by

calculus, in SO many fidd s, were so valuabl e
MADHAVA OF SANGAMAGRAMA and impressive that the inconsistencies at
( 1350-1 425) the heart of calculus wcre nOt immediately
The Indian mathematician Madhava addrc5Scd.
of Sangamagrama is considered by
many to be the earliest originator of AFTER NEWTON AND LEIBNIZ
analysis as a method. He founded The disagrecment bctwccn Newton and
the Kerala school of mathematics Leibniz over priority had the result that
and astronomy, which flourished subscqucnt work with calculus was
between the 14th and 16th polarizcd. As Lcibni z had come up with the
centuries. He was the first to accept usable notation, his was carried forward and
limits tending to infinity and to Continental Europl! bccame the arena in
define infinite series. He discovered which developments in calculus were played
the infinite series of the out. J\Tewton's interest III geometry
trigonometric functions and obscured the cak"Ulus hl! was using and his
developed several methods for aversion to his rival's notation mcant that
calculating the circumference of a few people in Britain followed him, despite
circle and two methods for finding admiring the results he achit.-'ved.
n. He also made steps towards the In thl! decades after Lcibniz's
development of both integral and publication, thl! Swiss brothers Jakob
differential calculus. His writings (1654-170H) and Johann Bcrnoulli
have not survived, so his (1667-1748) dominatcd calculus, along with
achievements are known by Leibniz himself Thc Bernoullis dl!veloped
reputation only. the rules for differentiation, the intc~,'Tation
of rational functions, the theory of

Jllkob (lift) 111/{1 Jobfllll/ (rigbt) Hemal/iii Clnne fivl/J

II f,dellfed fllmily of frllde!;mell IIIIlI !;dJoIa/"s (/ml11."fr?
Ollly two ofeigbr 1I1f1rbemaricilll/f ill tb eJrtmily!

157
 GRASP ING TH E INfiNITE
elementary functions. applications to
mechanics. and the geometry of lllrVes - in
fact, most of the fundamentals of classical
calculus with the exception of the power
series that most interested Newton. Thl'
Bernoulli brothl'r.; even used call'ulus to
demonstrate NewtOn's mvn inverse square
rule applied to gm\~ty in an elliptical orbit,
which Nl'wton had nOt explained well.
[]l the mid-19th century, Riemann refined
the method for calculating an integral,
suggesring comparing two sets of thin slices.
one inscribed and one circumscribcd. As the
two values approarn each other (with thinner
and thinner slices) the o·ue imeb'Tal is found.
In,crIb..d ,lie",
DEALING WITH DILEMMAS
H owever useful calculus was, the
inconsistencies at its heart would not go
away and sooner or later thL"}' had to he
dealt with. Dealing with these resulted in
the development of analysis - not itsclf a
computational technique, hut a sound
logical basis for usin g cakulus.
Two dilemmas, highlighted by the
(Titics of early apillications of calculus, arise
as soon as we Start to think more rigurously
about differentiation than did NewtOn and
Leilmiz. One is L'VoeativeJy eaptured in
Berkeley's 'ghosts of departed quantities';
the other might be ca lled the 'brhost of a
moment' . The rea l world is better
158
characterized hy the model o f a con tinuum
than by a set of discrete parts. (This r('Calls
the disrinction we made at th e very start
between counting and mea.'>uring, between
arithmetic and gl'ometry, as wl'll as the
problems of the continuous and thl' discrete
at the heart of Zcno's paradoxe.'i.)
Think about any system that involvcs
continuou~ change - water flowin g over a
dam or air over an aircraft wing, for
example. As local conditions vary, the rate of
flow is not conStant. l\ 'l easuring it at any
moment involves some kind of
approxim:nion or averaging as the time
interval could always he made small er. Only
by freezing time could we take an accurate
measurement. But fl ow depends on time. so
if we freeze time the flow is zero.
1t is not only rime that can he endlessly
subdivided. For c.xample, as tl'mperature
chanf,'"Cs from 1" to 3", it must go through
aJl infinite numher of imermnliate stages;
even 1" and 3° thcmselvcs are infinite
decimals, with an infinin.· numher of zeroes
aftcr the decimal point. In modelling
continuous change, we must deal with these
fleering values - and th ey arc necessarily
infinite decimals.
The concepts and deductive stl1.lctures
hehind infinite quantities came to
preoccupy mathematicians working with
calculus as they struggled to develop ri gour.
For analysis to become a rigorous and
dependable tool, mathematicians first
needed to tind some way of dealing with thc
vagueness of these ghosts of quantities and
moments. The Gernlan mathematician Karl
Weierstrass (1815- 97) was the first to
produce a complct~ly satisfactory definition
of the limit o f a seri es. H e became known as

the father of modern analysis for devising a
test fur the convergence of series and fur his
work on functions. Using the sequence
\Veitmtrass would say that all we need to do
is pick the level of error (or approximation)
that is acceptable (~) and then continue with
the series until we reach a term lIn which is
smaller than the error, then we C3 n say th3t
the series has reached its limit. Thi s
removes the need for nebulous
infinircsimals and gives a real numher
which satisfies the requirements. Also,
although the series 3pproaches its limit, it
docs not have to reach it for Weierstrass's
condition to be met. Now, the margin of
approximation could he stHed 3nd the
Gt'1"mIl1l1l1arhemllticillll KRrllf/(ierstll1J:f ,ray
rom:lTlled 7.:.'itb elimil/tltillg illCl)/lsisrmries ill edirt/IIIS
(111£1 defillil/g rbe limir of II series.
CAlCUlUS ANO BHONO
INFINITE SERIE S
An infinite series is a series with an infinite
number of terms. For example,
is an infinite series, with each term being
half of the last. The limit of this series - t he
number that would be reached if we could
get to the end of the infinite number of
terms - is 1. Because the series reaches a
definite limit it is said to converge. Other
series do not converge, such as
This series diverges as it never settles to a
limit. Some convergent series can be
ambiguous:
0+1-1+1-1+
oscillates between 1 and O.
degree of accur3CY quantified . There was
no need to worry about quantities that h3d
to disappear from existence - analysis was
put on to a logical footing.
CALCULUS BECOMES ALGE.BRAIC
Durin g the 18th century, calculus moved
3W3Y fi-om itS geometric roots in the work
of NewtOn and Leib niz and became
increasin gly algcbr3ic. Geometric curves
became less important 3nd algebraic
functions moved to centre sta ge. Soon,
complex numbers moved in on the scene.
Differentiation offers a useful tool for
159
 GRASP ING T HE INf IN ITE
finding local m3ximum and minimum
values benvecn upper and lower limits. If we
draw a curve of a function, the slope
approaching a maximum point flattens out;
the curve is momentarily tlat (has a slope of
0) at the maximum point, then it curves
downward again, its slope reversing.
As rate of change is equivalent to a
tangent draWll to the curvc, it is ea!>y to Spot
maximulll or minimum points - it is those
pinel's at which the curve has a slope of zero
and tbcn reverses its slope. This knowlcdb'C
makes it possible to find the changes of
direction all local maXlllllllll and
mlllllllUlll points benvecll bowldarie5 -
without drawing the graph. Where the
function differentiates to zero, the tangent
to the curve is parallel tc) the axi~.
Differentiation is also useful for working
with :dl of the many phenomena which
cxhibit exponenti:tl growtb or decay - such
as population b'TUwth, or radioactive decay.
By examining the rate of change at given
moments, it's po~iblc to extrapolatc to find
valucs for the furure (or past).
WAVE FUNCTION S
The ability of calculus
detcrmine ma.Xllna
nlllllllla has made
especially valuable for
working with all kinds
of waveform, from
acoustics to optics, from
clectromagnetism to
seismic activity. The
earlie;t work in this field
was carried our by the
English mathematician Bl"Ook
T.1ylor (1685-1731) who produced
160
a mathematical description of the
vibrational frcquent), of a violin string in
17 14. The French mathematician Jean Le
Rond d'AJcmhcn (1717-83) refined the
model in 1746 to take account of more
conditions and limit'i, and of v,;uiation in
some pmpenies alon g the length of the
stl"ing. His dClllonStl"ation had twO
wavcfonllS travelling in different dircctions.
The Scottish physicistJamcs ClerkMa.nveil
(1831-79) found the same thrcc-
dimensional wave when exploring
electromagnctism. It enabled him to predict
the cxisrence of radio waves. Radio,
television and radar are all dL·vdopments
dependent on the early analyric work on the
waveforms of musical inso·unlenl5.
Further work on thc propagation of
sound hy th e Swiss mathematician
Leonhard Eulcr found a trigonomctric
scries:lt the heart of the problem (1748), In
1822 the French mathematician J()seph
Fouricr (1768-1 ~30) also found a
trigonometric series ddining the way heat
spreads along a mctal rod. From this hc
developed Fourier analysis, which enabled
him ro find the values necdcd to
model heat spread for any initial
temperature distribution.
Fo uricr analysis is used to
analyse complex, composite
waveforms, brcaking them
do wn into their
component..:; and values.
For instance, an audio
signal can be amlyzed into
Nidmrrmnl 'Drrfty' at «hool ill
Edillburgb. .1f111l1'f Nffl,l"U.'tll p/'odllml
l];/JI ·k to rivrr/lllly gt"f.'ill pbyridsr.

LEONHARD EULER ( 170 7-83)
The Swiss mathematician and physicist
Leonhard Euler spent most of his life in
Germany and Russia. He published more
iL~ different frequenci es and amplitudes.
Although his methods were not rigo rous,
they were later refined and are, in essence,
used today - ror compre~ing sound into
downloadable At1P3s, tor example.
Too HARD
Some problems proved intractabl(! even
with th e usc of calculus. The movement of
the planeL~ in the solar syStem, for t;!XOlmple,
is toO complex to be accountcd for by
straigh tforward series. The field of dynamic
system th eory has developed to ta ckle
such problems. Esscntially, local data drawn
from particular sit(!s within a much larger
tleld arc analyzed and reslllts from these
arc applied to known global properties of
CAlCUlUS AN O BUON O
than any other mathematician has ever done,
his work filling 60 to 80 volu mes. He worked in
many fields, making significant breakthroughs
not just in analysis, but in graph theory,
number theory, calculus, logic and several
branches of physics.blished much of the
notation used now, including {(x) for a function
of x, the notation fo r the trigonometric
functions, the use of the symbols e (e is
sometimes called Euler's number) and
i and L (for summations). He also popularized
(but did not originate) the use of the Greek
letter Jr. His most startling discovery was
Euler's identity.
1n
e + 1 '" O.
Tbl' 'Kdlligwcrg bridges' problem ';l}//S solved by
Elller ill 1736. Ir ash ;J.· babn· il is porsible 10 crors
ellcb ofrbl'si'lJt7I bridges ill Kdl/igsbrrg Ollly OIlU,
1l'lIIl7Iillg to (be Hllrlillg paim. Ettl,.r pl"Ovl'd rbllr ir
is 11(1(, dl'fillillg rbl' Elflniall prllb ill rbe PI"f)Ct'ss (II
pillb (bar follU"J.JS etUb edgr, bllt ollly Ollce). His proof
is rbf jirst Ibeol"e," ofgl"flpb Ibl'o'1.
161
 GRASP IN G T HE INfiNITE

Kil/g Orefl/" /1 wbo affired a

GREENHOUSE GASES prize fol· detfl""II/illillg b(r.l.1

Fourier was the first person to suggest, in Stftble fbe mla/" rySWII 'I:.'as.

1827, that gases in the atmosphere may

lead to increasing temperature on a planet NewtOn had used the
- the greenhouse effect. inverse square law
of gravitation to
demonstrate the
elliptical orbit
of planets th~t
Kepler had
noticed, but he
also fOlUld that
the syStem was too
complex to calculate if
more thall two bodies were involved. The
king now wanted a solution involving nine
bodies - the sun and the eight planets
known at the time. Poincare's solution did
the whol e system . Today, computers not, in fact, deal with nine bodies. H e
analyze, approximate and ass(;!Ss solutions restricted himself to three and even then
created in this way. assumed that one had negligible mass (and
Dynamic systems theory was fi rst so negligibl e gravitation~l effect). H e
developed by Henri Poincare modelled ~ sample of what may happen in
(1854-1911) for a competition. a limited arl'a - where the path of 3
[n 1885, King Oscar II of planet intersected with this are3 - and
Sweden and Nonvay offered a extr3polared the rate of change to come
prize to detcmlin(;! the stability up with a prediction for the stability
of the solar ~ystem - saying of the whole system. Although
whether it would continue in Poinc3f(! WOll the prize for
much the same state or his partial solution, he
whether, for e.'l:ample, a planet noticed a mistake in his
could fly off Oil a rob'lIt! solution and spent more
journey of its own , perh~ps than the prize money
colliding with the sun. III reprinting his
solution.
Hl'llri Pail/cOli v.}as blessM From the end of
witb a formidable 1f1171/oI) the 1Hth century,
f/lld was ablf to master mathematicians were
mfllly disaplillfs. more willing to accept

162
 CALCULUS ANO BUONO

, The hllle dire rl'[ln'fi'llts (11/ tina ill <:..birb dnrfl

Polnu.r~ .octlon
abollt p/flllftflry 'II1ovmlelllS fin' rol/uud. Tb.>
poil/ty of imnwcrioll wit/; rbe

trajectory

discovered that many

SOAP BUBBLES AND ARCHITECTURE functions cou ld not he
The blind Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau (1801-83) integrated, or hehaved in a
studied the fi lms and bubbles created by soap solution. bizarre way if integrated. A~
Soap solution forms minimal surfaces- the minimal surface a consequence, integration
area that can cover a space. Minimal surface mathematics was redefined by the French
is a productive area of research. The West German pavilion mathematician H enri-Leon
at the Expo 1967 World's Fair in Montreal, designed by Frei Lebesgue (1875- 1941 ) around
Otto, was based on minimal surfa ce studies of soap films. 19CX1. Instead of taking thin
slices of the b'nph vertically
beneath the curve, Lebesgue
complex numbers and Gauss began suggested taking thin slices horizontally.
applying the principles of analysis to them This gn.'arly increased the usefulness of
in 1811. Analysis using cumplex numbers - inreb'Tal calculus as it could now be used
complex analysis - is possible because with discontinuous functions. It expanded
com pie-x numb ers arc deemed to follow the possible applications of Fourier analysis.
many of the same laws as real numbers. There are very many different brJncht.'s
Modern analysis differs in many regards and applications of analysis and they spi ll
from ea rly analysis . Mathematicians over into all areas of scienc£'.

TradiUnoollntegrollon. taking """ I<al .II<~ '

163
 GRASP I NG T H( INFI N IT(

The Lorl'llZ attraclm; (J model of the 1I1iJVe'1llmtolit'l· CHAOS THEORY

time of (I chaotic syrrml. (here, wCf/thn). Even tbollgh Poincan:'s method IS the foundation of
challges ffi'lll rnmr,m, t};e01.lfmll ryrrelll jrA"1llf a paTteI7/. chaos theory, which developed greatly
during the 20th century. It is a
method which enab les useful
LOST GLORY data to be drawn from apparently
The Japanese researcher Yoshisuke Ueda discovered a random systems. Computers
chaotic system in the same year as lorenz (1961), but have made the study of chaos and
his supervisor did not believe in chaos and would not chaotic systems possible. The
let him publish his findings until 1970. work involves carrying out the
same calculations again and ag'ain

,6<
 CA LCULUS ANO BHOND

of the selJuence. He found

THE BUTTERflY EFFECT the resulting weather
A popular encapsulation of chaos theory is the idea that the prediction was radically
movement of a butterfly's wings may cause or prevent a diftcrent from the one he
tornado, as the small local effect is amplififfi as it triggers or had obtained the first time.
prevents other changes in the atmosphere. It is likely that The reason, he found, was
the idea come~ trom a science fie lion story by Ray Bradbury, that his printout rounded
'A Sound of Thunder' (1952), in which a time traveller fi!,'llres to thrce digiL~ (from
causes subtle changes in human history by inadvertently six) and this Slmll error was
killing a butterfly during a visit to Jurassic limes. enough to produce a hugely
different result.
Chaos theory is applied
with different valucs - this would be to many areas of science, including physics,
virtually impossible without computers. medicine, tectonics, computing, mldics of
A system which appears to be chaotic (in lasers and electricity. It also has applications
the usual sense of the word) in faCt follows oUL~ide science in areas as diverse as
strict rules. HowL'Ver, the system is SO econom.il"S. psychology and soci()lob'Y'
scnsitive to tiny changes in the starcing
point of its variables tha t ie; hehaviour is, to MOVING ON
all intt:llL~ and purposes, unpredictable. The tl;!chniques of calculus and analysis arc
\¥eather forecasting is notoriously difficult useful in examining trends in dara of many
beyond the very short range because a vcry kinds. Yet before dara can be examined,
large number of factors can affect the they mUSt hI;! collected and processed.
weather and the outcome is very sensitive to Surprising as it .~eems, the idea of collecting
starting condicions. It IS effectively data on which to base deci.~ions - and
impossible to produce :lll accurate forecast making that data collection rigorous and
beyond a few days . fair - is a relatively rl;!cent dt..'Veiopmem.
It was while working on weather The branch of mathematit..os which has
forecasting in 1961 that Edward Lorenz come to be known as statistics has grown up
(b.I917) made a significant discovery in over only the last 400 years. Intercstingl~',
chaos theory. He wanted to repeat a weather its emergence coincided with the
modelling operatioll, but to save time he development of calt-ulus, which has become
input figures from a printout he had run an important tool m statistics and
earlier, starting his model from the middle probability studies.

'"
 CHAPTER 7

NUMBERS
at work and play

Calculus and analysis arc a long way from the

everyday encounters with numbers that many
of us have. Even though most of the science we
come into contact with, most of the products
we usc and much of the world around us
depends on activities in higher mathematics,
our everyday encounters arc more likely to lie
with statistics and probability. In finance,
gambling, games, the economy and many other
spheres, numbers as predictors and risk
assessors help us to make decisions - whether
about buying a lottery ticket, taking out life
insurance or flying on a plane.

- -- - - -

Nllmbers, alld fh( possibilirier they o./frr, are with liS 1/11 rh( time.
 NUMBERS AT WOR K AN D PlAY

Cheer up, it may never

ha p pen
Humankind has played gamt!S of chance
for millennia. This is playing with numbers;
the fall of the dice or roll of the roulette
wheel arc effectively random, and winning
at these games demands either large slices
of luck or great proficiency in calculating
probabilities and risks.
Vcry simple probabilities are ea~y to see -
if we toss a coin, there is a 1 in 2 chance that
it will land hcads and the same chance that it
will land tails. If we toss a coin a large
number of times, we will probably get about
as many heads as t::J.ils. This was first noted by Altbollgb j{ is pruYible to 'bear rbe !milk' ovn' a rb01"{
the Swiss mathematicianJakoh Bernoulli in a pn'iod of rime, rbe cilSilio is fai,.,y cent/ill to 11,ill ill
treatise published posthumously in 1713. H e tbeiollg1'lUi.
did acknowledge that the result is so patently
ohvious that l.'ven a very stupid person would Between the obvious probabilities and
notice it, but he is sti ll given credit for it as he
the Law of Large Numbers, problems of
spent 20 ycars developing a rigorous probability become more complex. "Vhat
demonstration of why it is true. He called it are the chances of getting tails exactly five
his Golden Theorem, but it is generally times in a row? If we throw three dice, what
known now as the Law of Large Numbers. is the chance of getting three sixes?
Casinos depend on it; although an individual "Ve need to do a littl e work with
gambler may have a I1.m of good luck, over probability to be abl c to L-alculate tht!.~e;
time a casino can expect to keep ;.3 per cent the chance of getting tails fi ve timt!S in a
of all the money bet on a roulette wheel. row is 1 in 2' = 1 in 31; the chance of
throwing three sixes is 1 in 6)
=1 in 116.
DICE AND CHAOS For most of tlle many
Although the fall of dice or spin of a roulette wheel are th ousands of years th:n
effectively random, they are actually determined events. people have been playing
The starting position and all prevailing conditions, games of chance, they had
including the direction and force of the throw, the surface no way of working Out thc
of the table and the exact featu res of the dice will probabilities of different
determine the outcome. However, there are too many Outcomes beyond the few
conditions, and their measurement is too difficult, for the that are very obvious or for
outcome to be modelled or calculated. which it is easy to enumerate
the possibilitit!s.

168
 CHHR UP. IT MAV NtV[R H APP£N

A GAME OF CHANCE have the laSt 16 coins. Again, pla}rer A

Probability - the chance or likelihood of an receives 48 and player B receives 16 coins.
evcnt happening - entered mathematit..os in Pascal's strategy w~s the one which won
the 17th ccnrury and it was in the context of approv~l among mathematicians de~ling
a game of chance. Although Gcrolamo with chance evcnts.
Cartlano had wriUt'n on games of chance in
the 1520s (sec page 132- 3), his work was All'S FAIR.•.
not published until 1633 50 he lost Out m Although gaml!S of ch,mce continued to
Fermat and Pascal. In a series of letters, the interest mathcm~ticians, another impetus
pair discussed a problem proposed by a was the lebTfiI idea of a fair contr~ct. 1n a f~ir
gambler, the Chevalier de Mere: cOntr~ct, the parties have equal expectations.
This was an important concept bCc:IUSI! fair
Two players are playillg a gll1lle ofpllre cballa expl!ctations were at the heart ()f the
Oil 1vbich Mcb bas bet 32 coillS. 77)('. first to justification for mOlll!y-lending. Christian
will three times ill a row claims tbe pot. doctrine b~ns lL~Ul"y - profiting fn)m lending
HfToJ)r·i.'l'1; the;,. game is illffnwptfd after Ollly monl!y. To get around the difficulty, lenders
three gaJJus. Phlyrr A hm WOII t7J.lia Illid were considered to he investors who put in
player B has 001/ once. How C/1/I they divide money at their own risk and could fairly
the pot fairly? cxpect to share in the profits.
Until the 17th century, the rates for
The two mathematicians both came up with loans and annuities were fixed with no
a 3:1 distribution in favuur of player A, regard for any m~themati('""al
though they arrived at the .solution hy concept of risk or how it
different methods. might be c~ Il"Ulated. The
Fermat gave his answer in terms of first trc~tise on
probabilities. Two more games is the mOSt calculating risk ~ppl!ared
that would bt' needed Il) decide the match, in thl! Netherlands in
and there are four possible outcomes AA, 1671, produced by Jan de
AE, BA, BB. Only the last would make B the \Vit after consulting
overall winne]'. so he has a one in four Christia~n H uYb't'ns.
chance and should receive a quarter of the At the time,
winnings . Pascal propo~d a solution based anllu iti es were
on expectation. Assuming B wins the next sold by th e state
round, each player would have ~n equal to r~i.,e money,
claim to 32 coins. Player A should receive uften to finance
32 coins anyw~y as he definitely has twO wars. The retum
wins. The chance of B winning this next
game is 50 per cent so he should h~ve half of Jilll dr /fItt ITt//iull
the remaining 32 coins. Pl~yer A also has a tbat 11rk sbollld govt"1"II
50 per cent chance of winning and should 1"afnofn711I"rI.

'69
 NUMBERS AT WOR K AN D PUY
was Ollways a seventh of the vOllue of the
annuity, paid eOlch year unril the holder's
death. The age or health of the holder was
nOt taken into aeL'()UnL Clearly, without 3ny
assessment of how long the state m3Y h3\'e
to pay the 3111luity holder, this could be
cxpcnsive. Even though de \Vir could sec
the fhws in the system, there were 3t the
time no dat3 on mortality 3t different ages,
so little could be done to improve the
syStem - ami little W3S done. rt was nOt until
1762 that 3n insurance company III
London, Equitable, began to price iL~
policies on the basis of calculated risk, or
probability.
GOD EXISTS - PROBABLY
Prob3bility did nOt become 3n exact
mathematiC31 concept until the 18th
cenrury, and was sti ll gcnerally considered
an indisrinct ide3 based on common sensc
into the 19th century. The French
mathematici3n Pierre-Simon de Laplace
(sec p3ge 174) refcrred to probability as
'good sense reduced to calculation'.
Interestingly, a link between chance and
religion hecame a central interestofn3tural
theology in the 18th century. John
Arbuthnot (1667- 1735) produced evidcnce
that God defmitdy exists from a study of
christening statistil's in London hetween
1629 and 1710. He showed tim there were
slightly more boys born th311 girls - 14 boys
christened for every 13 girls - yet hy the 3ge
of marri3ge the b3lance of thc sexes was
equal. If wc 3ssu me th3t the chancc of 3
chi ld heing born a boy is 0.5, the ch3nce of
more boys th3n girls being born every year
for H2 years is 0.5~! . Th e same p3ttern of
more male births is found throughout the
170
PASCAL'S WAGER
In 1657·58 Blaise Pascal wrote a
philosophical essay in which he described
the 'wager a sceptic should make. The
penalty for not believing in God (the
Christian God, for Pascal) could be eternal
damnation; however, the cost of believing
in God if He turns out not to exist is slight.
At most, the person who chooses to believe
may relinquish a few fleeting pleasures and
spend a few fruitless hours in church.
Although the sceptiC may feel that the
chance of God's existing is very small, the
cost of lOSing the wager is so high and the
price of belief so comparatively low, that it
is a better bet to believe than not believe.
world . Arbuthnot took this as
incontrovertible evidence of Divine
Providence Olt work, setring up society with
the perfect habnce. (it doesn't seem to h3ve
occurred to him th3t Divinc Providence
could equally wdl h3\'e killed fewer boys on
the p3th to adulthood, mus 3voiding the
suffering of bere3vcd Inrenrs at the S3me
time as achieving the required balance.)
The argument was generally adopted and

refined. HowC--'Ver, Nicolas Bernoulli, the
more rat ional Swiss mathem:nician,
sUb'gestcd that perhaps the probability of a
male birth was not 0.5 at all but 0.5169,
which would producc exactly the required
re~ult with no need for divine intervention.
MAKIN G DEC ISION S
As with Pascal's wager, many dl'cisions that
may he influenced by a knowledge of
probability are also affccted by a more
subjective perception of desirable outcomes
and the concept known as 'marginal utility'.
Imagine a national lottery, in which tickt:r.~
COSt one ducat (a coin in IL~e in much of
Europe in the 18th century) and the prize is
a million ducats. For a poor man, a ducat is
very valuable, and the payout immensely so.
For a rich man, a ducat is of little
consequence, though the payout is still
valuable to bim. Th(' rich man can better
afford to bet a Jucar tllan the poor man, bur
a.~ he has less need of the prize he might not
bother. A1though the probability of winning
is equal for hoth, the decision about whether
to buy a ticket is very different for each.
Ll the 17 50s and I 760s, inQ{:ulation
against smallpox was a topical subject of
deb'lte. The inoculation used live smallpox
virus and in a small number eJses produced
smallpox Oenner's vaccine produce<l from
cow pox was :I later and safer introduction).
Smallpox wa.~ very common, often deadly
and, even when not futal, frequently led ro
lifdong damagt>- such as blindnc.~s or brain
damage. Someone who did not have the
vaccine stood :I high chance of contracting
smallpox at some time in the future, and a
I in 7 chanceof dying from it. Someone who
chose to have the vaccine stood a ~lllall
CHHR U P, IT MAY NtV[R H APP£N
chance (not measured) of dying immediately
of smallpox brought on by the inO<.lllation,
Imt othenvise virtually no chance of dying of
smallpox III the future. The purely
mathematical calculatiun , canied out b)'
Daniel Bernoulli, suggested that there was
only one .'icnsiblc choice - inoculation. But
the Frrnch mathematidan Jean Le Rond
d'Alembert, among others, argued that
many pcople may prefer the better chance of
sun'iving the next week or two to the
aS~llrance of safety in the furore. (TI)day,
plenty of people prefer the immediate
adv:l1lmg\! of long-haul flighn; m the long-
teml henefit of still having a planet [() live on.)
INDEPENDEN CE
People are nOt only affected by marginal
utility and the preference d'Alembert noted
for short-term benefit. They may also be
swayed by .~llperstition that has no grounds
in statistical probahility at all.
Imabrine flipping a coin ten times; the
prohahility of getting heads each time is 1 in
210. Suppose the first time it is heads. Now
the probability of all ten flips being heads is
I in 29. If the first nine come up heads, the
probahility of ten heads, by the
•
last time, is I in 2. Now
suppose you want to fly on a
plane. You know that the
chances of dying in a plane
crash are, say, I in a million on
any particular flight (this is not
the real prohability). You have
already made 1,000 flights
HlmUIII beil/g!' H'rlll hnppy to gnlllb/~
-with t}nir/ollg-w'm fllrtln: if it
1m'tlns gnills ill tbe shon tfl711.
171
 NUM BER S AT WO RK AN D PlAY
HERD IMMUNITY
Some diseases have been completely or
nearly eradicated by national inoculation
programmes. An example is measles, once
endemic in the westem world but now rare
in countries with inoculation programmes.
However, worries about the safety of the
vaccine in the T9905 led to a reduced
take-up of childhood vaccimtion in the UK
and measles began to take hold again.
While the vast majority of a population
has immunity, a few
unprotected individuals
benefit from the 'herd
immunity' as the disease
can't get a foothold
amongst the inoculated
population. However, as
the number of
unprotected in dividuals
rises, the presence of the
disease increases to the
safely. Your chances of dying this time are
still one in a mill ion - the previous flights
do nOt Olffcct this one. In this case the events
are independent; even if you had made
99!J,999 tlights safely - or tell million - the
chances of dying in the next flight would
still be only 1 in a million. But it doesn't feel
like that to many people. The perception is
often that if we hav~ been 'lucky' up to now,
our luck is du~ to run out. it can work the
other way, too. People may pick the same
lottcry number each week bccause they
believe their Ilumber 'must come up sooner
172
point where it can spread amongst the
uninoculated population.
The dilemma facing parents who were
unconvinced about the safety of the vaccine
mirrored that of the people making a choice
about the early smallpox vaccine. For SOCiety
as a whole, there was a moral dimension -
was it right that a few individuals should
avoid the (pOSSible) risk posed by the
vaccine and depend on benefiting from
the herd immunity
acqUired at the cost of
everyone else taking that
risk? For mathematiciam
and medics, there was
a different question:
what proportion 01 the
population could
remain unvaccinated
before their safety was
compromised?
or later' . few people. pick numbers 1, 2, 3,
4, 5 and 6 because thL'Y believe (irrationally)
that this combination is less likely to be
drawn than any other. This tendency is nOt
so far removed from the Ancients who
beliL'Vcd the number 3 had special properties,
or who wore a magic square for protection.
INTERDEPENDENCE
\"'hen choosing whether to hoard a plane,
people are dealing with random eventS -
they have no control oyer whether the plane
will crash. A situation that is harder for

Johll "011 N~lImOIlII <I.'Ui II 'Tm'lIlbn' of rhe /Ilnitirr.'
fm'Admll~d Stlldy ur PrlllcrtOIl. a gn)/lp of
IICfllkllllri affertlolltlrrly im/f;l'lllls rbr 'demi-godf'.
mathematicians [Q modd i~ that in which
one person's actions are dependent on or
linked with those of another person (such a~
the decision aoout whether [Q vaccinate a
child). This is addrL'Ssed by game theory,
developcd in the 1~s by the Hungari an-
American mathematici:m John \'on
Neumann and the German-American
Oskar M orgenstern.
Dcsp irc its name, game theory is
concerned with the serious pursuits of
econom ics ra ther th an th e frivolity of
games. Nlorgenstern and von Neumann saw
that the mathematicalmodds developed for
systems in physics and other areas of science
werc poor tools for working with economics
and other ~rudics that involve human
behaviour lK'Cau~e they werc ba~ed on the
actions of disinterested parties. \Vh en
people make choices, they try m maximize
CH HR U P, IT MAV NtV [R H A PP£N
the benefi t for themselves. They may also
try to minimize the detriment to others - or
they may pay no atten tion to th e impact on
others, or evcn act to spite them.
Game theory trics to rake accOunt the or
motives and insights of people acting in thc
situation that is moddled, as well as many
other rel evant a~pccL~. For example, players
- which may be individuals, groups, nations
or corporations, for example - may he in
direct competition or may cooperate to a
greater or lesscr dcgree. They may be
competing for a finite resource or infinite
resources. They may he in full possession of
all relevant information, including the
actions of other players, or have only partial
acce~s to information. There are different
brame theory modds to cover these and
other possibilities. Game theory often
produces a matrix of out comes which can
then bc analyzed.
BACK W ARD REASONIN G
Proofs such as that of Arbuthnot that God
exists work backwards from effects to C::lIl.ses
- there arc equal numbers of marriagcahle
men and women, th erefore God exists.
J akoh Bernoulli demonst rated that, if th e
probability of an event is nOt known, it can
be inferred from looking at the results of
experiment or observation as long as th e
observer has sufficient kno wl edge and
experiencc. He gave as an example the fun
that if a coi n is tOssed enough times, the
ratio of heads to tails approaches ever more
closely the ideal 1: 1. A formal
demonstration of prolmhiliry in this way was
made independently by Thomas Bayes and
by Laplace and is now known as Bayes'
theorem. Laplace famously used it to argue
173
NUM BER S AT WO RK AN D PlAY
the probability of the sun rising tomorrow,
given our knowledge that it has risen every
day for the last 6,000 year.; (which in 1744
was considered to be the age of the Earth).
laplace and his contemporaries tried to
put probability at the heart of the moral
.~cicncc5, though their attempt was
somewhat dubious. Enlightenment
philosophers and reformers were concerned
with the value of the judgements made by
electorates and juries - \\"ould they reach the
right decision or deet the hest t':lndidate?
They addressed this as a problem in
probability. As.'mming that each juror aeted
independently (French juries did not
PIERRE·S IMON , MARQUIS DE LAPLACE (1 749- 1827)
The French sdentist and mathematician
Pierre·Simon de laplace was most famous
for his work on astronomy and his
application of probability to scientific
problems. He was the son of a peasant
farmer, who revealed mathematical ability
while at a military academy in Beaumont.
In 1766 he went for one year
to the UniverSity of eaen, but
left for Paris, where lean
d' Alembert helped him to
secure a professorship at the
Ecole Militai re. He taught
there until 1776.
laplace applied Newton's
theory of gravitation to the
movement 01 the planets. He
perfected the contemporary
model of the sol ar system and
delih erate) and had a grea ter than 0.5
chance of reaching the right verdict, they
worked Out the optimum size of jury and
the majority needed to reach a safe
conviction. The practice of deciding jury
S17..t.' and majority using probability
continued until the 18305. By then the
system was coming into disrepute and a
pupil of l aplace, Simeon-Denis Poisson,
used ncw statistics to produce a better
model.
Before probability could be used
effectively in any area, though, reliable
information was necessary. Statistics and
probability go hand in hand.
demonstrated that apparent changes are
not cumulative, but occur and correct
themselves in predictable cycles. (Isaac
Newton had suggested that divine
intervention was sometimes needed to put
the solar system right!) laplace was the first
to suggest that the solar system was
formed by the cooling of a
van cloud of gases.
His explanation of
planetary motions made him
a celebrity. laplace was
president of th e Board of
longitude, helped to
organize the development
and introduction of the
metric system, and for six
weeks was minister of the
interior under Napoleon.

Samples and statistics
\Vithout infor mation on which to base
decisions, it is lX)ssibl c to cakulate only the
most basic prohahilitiC$. A~tonishingly, it
was not until the latt! 1ith century that
peoplt! beg'a n to recognize the true value of
collectin g n u meric informatiun ahout
populations and economies. Suddenly,
statistics were everywhere and computing
with them gave new insights into how
societies might: work. For the first time, the
gUL"is\\'ork was takert out of planning and
the burgeoning science of statistical analysis
had material to work with and aims to
work towards.
PEOPLE COUNTING
Collecting information about the number
of people living in an area by t:lking a census
has been practised intermittently for
thous,mcls o f years. The Babylonian s,
Ancic.nt Chinese, Egyptians, Greeb and
Romans all held population cem-uses. in
Cbristian trad ition, the p:Jrents of J esus
travell ed to Be thlehem immediately before
His birth bccau$t' the five-yearly census
required everyone in the Roman Empire to
rerurn to their place of birth to be counted .
The very basic information collected in
thcse early censuses allowcd rulers to work
Out how much money could he collected in
taxes, how many people could be recruired
for an army o r building project and how
much food could be produced or would be
needed. In Et,'Y]lt, it was also used to
redistribute land after the annual flooding
of the Ni le. But no additional analysis of
population dat,1was carried Out and on~' the
most hasic details were collected. Often, the
census dat"J were not reliable. If p(..>(Jple
SAMPLE S AND STAT1STI CS
exp(..>(:tcd to be taxed on the hasis of how
many lived in a house, a few might he
missed out, for example.
In 1066, arrer the conquest of Britain by
Norman invaders, \Villiam the Conqueror
ht"ld a thorough audit of hi s new lands. Thi s
included a Cenl>l1S and a listing of every item
of prnperry in the land . It was written up in
the Domesda), Book - a m,1ssivl' undertaking
for the 11 th century and one which still
providcs valuable statistics for historians.
Thereafter, there '\~JS no enthusiasm for
regular census-taking. Although bishops in
many parts of Europe were supposed to
keep count of the families- in their dioct::scs,
there was littl e information about
popu lati on levels. Some people even
believed that taking a cemus wa s
sacrilegious, citing a Story !Tom the Bible
in which King D~vid attempted a census
which was interrupted hy a terrible plague
and never completed.
The fir.~ t regular census in modem times
was carried Out in Quehec, Canada in 1666.
In EurQpe, fccland was the first in 1703 ,
followed hy Sweden in 1i49. The US held
its firH ten-yearly ccnsus in 1790 ~nd
the UK in 1801; the US had jlL~t under
4 million inhabimnts and the UK JO million
(previous estimates had put the UK
population at between 8 and 11 millio n).
THE RISE OF STATISTICS
In 1662, the English Statistician J ohn
Graunt published a set of .~ tatistics drawn
from mortality records in London, and in
the 1680s the political economist \"lilliam
Petty publi shed a series of essays on
'politica l arithmetic' whieh provided
smtistical records with calculations - some
175
 NUMBERS AT WORK AN D PlAY

quite bizarre, such as the monetary value of

all people in Ireland. On the whole,
THE CENS US AND COMP UTERS governments encouraged or financed
The demands of census.taking were statistical survey.~ ~nd gu~rded the rL'Sults
a considerable spur to the jc~ lous ly, using them to increase the power
development of technological aids of the st~te. They were still inextricably
to calculating. The first machine for tied up with ~uperstition and followed vcry
working with census data was used unscientific methods. One of th .. most
in 1870. Census data were f~mous 'p(Jlitic~1 ~rithmeticiaIlS' w~s the
transcribed on to a rolling paper Prussiall J()h~nn SlSsmi1ch, who published
tape displayed through a small three volumes over mOre than twenty ye~rs,
window. In 1884 Herman Hollerith ending: in 1765, proving again the existenee
(1860- 1929) acquired the first of God revealed in the harmony of
patent for storing data on punched socia l stati stics.
cards and organized the health Other SL1tistics were collected by
records for Baltimore, Maryland, scientist.~, profession~ls of different types
New York City and New lersey, and hum~nitarians. Lldeed, there was a
which won him the contract to growing enthusiasm for statistics, which
tabulate the 1890 census. The huge became something of a mania during the
success of this census opened other early 19th century. Suddenly, everything
markets to Hollerith and his was studied, counted, audited - the weather,
machines wen> used in Europe and ~6'Tieulture, population muveml'nts, tht.:
Russia. He incorporated his tides, the land, the Earth's magnetism ...
Tabulating Machine Company in The European countries that h~d l'mpircs
1896, which later became IBM. surveyed their new ~l'quisitions and took
cenSUSL'S in their colonies. As Americans
moved westward, claiming morc land. they
HQllmTb prodllced charted it and logSrcd its resources.
II 7IlUbllllicnl
Tahll/IITQ1· bllml SOC IETY IS TO BLAME
QII Tbr: idf"ll The Belgi~n m~them~tician Adolphe
rbllr 1111 Quetclet (1796-1874) was :1 champion of
pnl"fJ1111/ dllrt! st~tisti cs as the basis of the social study
C01l1d be cMrd which hi:' tcmled 'social physics'. He
111i1llt"I"icnlly. examined d~t~ of all kinds, using the
techniques common in som .. scientific
di~cipline.~ of amassing a vaSt collection of
dam ~nd looking for emergent p~trems. To
his surprise, he found them everywhere, not
JUSt in the ar(.'as where Divine Providenl'e

176
 SAM pu s AND STATISTI CS

Tarullno

%,000
Wi,ma Malo)ar",la~eu
55,000 67,000

";=='~'~=,:30 mi
12,000
Mohliow
Ntmun /IN r MI",k o " '''m

'.~~~~~.'
_ I~ _10
_10' _11 - _lO'
_30'
l_per"W,e -C
_]O' Oct6 .10' Sepl. 23 _21 ' Sept 14
_16 ' O::\. 7 ·1'" Oct , I _9 ' Sept. 9 0 ' Aug. 18

mi ght be expected to operate. In particular, 0111' if the mtJSr l/{'cowplished gmphim/ J'tpl'l!wlltariml:f
he was impressed to find th,u crime figure s ofrtlltirticr nm"ntndl' is (vurles .~1illaJ'd 'r gmph of
follow ed a predictable pattern. He Napole(JII} disasN'o/ts campaigll ill RI/Ssill ill 1812,
conjectured that they are a product of Ir shlTiJ.'s /l/olTality 011 the 1l-'<ry to 111111 flVlI! l\1OSW..v

society rather than indi,~duals and that,
while an individual criminal may be able to
rt'sist the urge to commit a crime, the
overall pattern of crime rates is altered little
by individual actions. He felt that the
proper study was of crime ratt's rather than
criminals and that the proper remedy to
c rim e lay in social action, including
education and an improved judicial ~ystem.
Careful use o f statistics to examine the
effects of changes and suggest directions for
future change would, he felt sure, produce
the desired results.
Quete1et's thesis promptt'd some debate
on the apparent contlict bet\vcen statistics
and the doctrint' of frce will - if crime rates
can bc deternlined by statistical methods
and arc unchanging over time, how much
freedom do individual s really havc over
their action s?
//lId Wll'1.'liltfl/l1:ith telllpn11t1ll'l!, The width of the
grull {lilt! ortillge lilies I'I.'PJ'fSl'IIlS the size of the anNY,
shlT,.JJilllf, hlT.JI it tT<1Jilldws, Ollly 4 PC!' cellt n'tt1l11ed
frum tbl' (iflllpaigll,
STATISTICS MEET SCIENCE
Perhaps surprisingly, it was nOt wuil th c
middl e of th e 19th century that statistics
beg'Om to be applied to science with th e same
enthusiasm and ri gour :::IS th l.)' had been
applied to social science. In the 1870s th e
Scottish physicist J :lIlH!-S Clerk Maxwell
often explained his theory of gases with
reference to social statistics. From the very
large numher of random movcmenL~ of
molecules hc derived thernlOdynamic laws -
order from chaos. He argued that, JUSt as
statistics relating to crime or suicide can
yield consistent rL'Sul1!; from the unordert'd
acts of individuals, so predictahle outcoml."s

177
 NUM BER S AT WO RK AN D PlA'

FLOREN CE NI GHTI NGALE ( 1820- 19 10) C.u",.ol mortaHty In the army In

the East. April 1854 to M.",h 1855
Florence Nightingale enjoyed a privileged
childhood in England, where her father taught D noo.ballle
D battle
her languages, philosophy, history and
mathematics. She claimed to have had a
message from God telling her she had a
vocation and later wanted to train as a nurse.
Her family resisted and she became instead an
expert on public health. She did later train as a
nurse and, du ring the Crimean War
(1854--56), was put in charge of the
hospital at Scutari, in Turkey, where
she revolutionized healthcare for
wounded soldiers. She kept copious
notes and after the war put together
an extensive report from the statistics
she had gathered. She used innovative
ways of presenting information in
graphs, such as the 'coxcomb'
graph (above right).
Nightingale worked tirelessly to
improve conditions in the British
army. She founded the first
training school for nurses Nigbtillfl,flle 11'/1$ 1I pi(lIIe,~' ill rbe
anywhere in the world, the flllalyris 111111 prtSelltlltioll of
Nightingale School for Nurses stllrmicf, 'CQxromb' grllpbr
in london, and established the 'wert derigllfll to be
professional footing of nursing. .. ""d""ood by et'I'1)'W</;"

on a large scale could be extracted from acts

that are unpredictable on the small scale.
Bur before statistics could be applied, it had
to develop as a mathematical discipline.
Mathematical methods specifically applying
to statistics beg:m to emerge from the end of
the 18th cenrury and proliferated rapidly.
'{S tatist/dans] have already overrun every
branch of science with a rapidity of conquest
rivalled only by Afti/a, Mohammed and the
Colorado beetle. '
Maurice Kendall, 1942

178
 STATISTI CAl MAT11£MATICS

Statistical mathematics Abraballl de !\1I)wre 11'flS tI pil)neel" ;11 flllalyric

grolllfny aNd Ibe lImn] 1)[ prwabi/if)'. beillgfirst
WHAT ' S NORMAL? II) 1I1)Iiu Ibe /lI)l7Ilt1l distribllti(JIl CIIrve.
Abraham de MoivTl' (1667-1754) was
the first pe~n to notice the ITom phr>ieal attributes such as
characteristic bell curvc of the height to characteristics of
nQmlal distribution (~ below} psychological profiling ~llch a~
The curve plots the &cquency propensity to get married or
or probability of valucs commit suicide.
a!:,'ninst the vnlues themselvcs.
The mOst frequently WORKING WITH ERROR
occUlTing result s are at the top, The early 19th cennuy saw a
representing the mean value; the rapid fiSC III mathematical
results that d,,'Viate most from this method~ involving statistics. \"'ork
noml and occur least frequently are on mcasuring the Earth's longitudinal
on the lower anns of thc cUive. The slope of cin:umferenee in order to detcmlim: the
the curve is determined by the deb'Tee of lenbl'(h of a metre (to be 1140,000,000 of the
,~ariation within the sample. Approximately cin'umference) needed statistical methoos to
6g per cent of the values in the nomlal deal with errors and inconsistenlies in geodetic
measurements. In 1805, the Frencb
mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre
(1751- 1833) propoSl'd a tedlllique which has
come to be known as the 'least
squares' method.
H e took values
minimized the sums of
the squares of
deviations in a set of
observations from a
" point, line or l"ul"'iC
diStribution are said to fall within one standard drawn through
deviation of the norm. them. GjUSS became
The normal distribution curve and the interested 111 the
concept of standard deviation ITom the noml method and showed
were widely used to assess statistics in many 111 1809 that it
different fields. L1place used the model, too, in
his probability stu(~cs, JXlnlcularly in applying Adrim-Milr;e
probability to very large numbers of evenn;. ugmdre hilS a
Quetelet argued that virtually all human train; emul" 1)/1 (be Mooll
confonned to the normal distributioo <.1.lIve, 1IIImed tlftn' bim.

179
 NUM8ERS AT WORK AN Il PUY

METHOD OF LEAST SQUARES

The method of least squares calculates
the best line through a set of points by
working out the smallest possible sum of
the squares of deviations from the line of
. actual ~alu .. ,
ilil the points. Squares are used to _ "n.. of I..au
"luar.. ,
remove the difficulty of dealing with
both positive and negative deviations,
o 02
since when squared they will both give a
positive result.

gave the best possible estimate if we assume
that the errors in mea~l.Irement follow the
Ilomlal distribution. The method of least
squan:s was applied to statistics ill all fields
and became the principal tool of
statisticians in the 19th century. 1t was often
used to estimate whole populations from a
study of a small sample.
PERFECTING HUMANITY
Francis lfollton, a wusin of Ch~rles Darwin,
took an interest in the \'~riation highlighted by
normal distribution and standard de,~utions.
H e used a model, known as the C:illiton board,
to show how a normal distribu tion is achieved
(see below). A set of peb'S is arranb't'd in a
triangle alxwe a row of cups. Ball bearillb'S
dropped at the top of the triangle bounce
down through the pegs to fall into u cup. A
few full into outlying mps but m(l)t full into
the mps in the middle of the board, forming ~
normal distribution curve.
Galton applied st~tistic~ l ideas to
heredity to show how v~riation tends to be
bred out, and generations of an organism
tend to revert to similar levds of variance.

•
• ,o,
,.' , o 0 0
Q 80 0 Q Q Q Q
Q Q Qlite Q G Q Q Q
QOQIit QQg
QQQQQQ
G 9 g !Jog 9

~
Q Q Q Q 0 Q Q

~
1;1 1;1 0 0 ~ " " (;I

IUIUIIi I
Ball bwrillgs dropped all ro the Gil/tOil board at the top art! dif/«tn/ illfo tbe ClIpS at (be boltom. Tbe
distriblltioll Of bill/ betlrillgs ill ClipS dmlOllsn'atrs tlllorma/ distributioll CIIrve.

180
 STATISTI CAl MAT11£MATICS

So although the chi ldren of ext·eptional the individuals included should bechosell at
parents may he exceptiona l memselvt!S, at random. The first triumph of this tf..>chnique
least in some ways, on me whole, they tend of stratifi ed sampli ng came in 1936 when
to regress towards me general population as George Gallup'S poll predicted the re-
a whole. Galton took his research in an election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the US,
alamling direction, becoming the founder whi le a larger, unstratified sample,
of the eugenic; movement which aimed to confidently (and wrongly) predicted the
guide human evolution tOwards perfection. opposite result. Gallup drew on a sample of
H e wanted to breed in 'good gencs' in the on ly 3,000 voters, while Literary Digest, me
way that breeders select me best genes in opposing pollsters, polled 10 million.
farm animals and crops. Roosevelt won with the largest landslide in
Although originally he was in ten.:!sted American history. A large sample is no
primarily in genetics and heredity, Galton b'llarantee of a representative sample or an
recognized the application of his statistical accurate result.
methods to other areas and Stressed the Experimental design went hand in hand
adaptabili ty of me tools he developed. with the development of statistical tools.
The use of a control group to compare with
COURTING RANDOMNESS
Developments in statistics aimed to enable
information rrom a sma ll sample of data to
be extrapolated or applied to a larger
populati on. By deciding the rate of crime or
marriage or an inherited disease in a sample
of the human population, for example,
researchers hoped to reach conclusions
ahout th e rate in the whole population. The
result.~ of any stati stical ~L1 rv t.'Y depend, of
course, on th e quality of the sample
measured. The head of the Nonvegian
Central Bureau of Statistics, A. N. Kiaer,
aimed to draw samples that covered the full
ran ge of representative varia bl c.~ in the
population, such as old and young, rich and
poor. The English statistician Arthur
Bowley was one of the first to try to
introduce randomness into sampling. Th e
Polish statistician J erzy Neyman hrought
these two concerns tOgether in 1934, trying Th~ lnlllislidr I"(-rim/Oll of Fmllklill D. Roos.7Jdr ill
to ensure that a samp le included 1936(f1I11CllSIIIJSII,.p,.isrtoGallllpwhlJhlldll.r~d
representatives of major variables but that sn"fllijlrd sffmplillg to pl'edict stich {t /Twit.

181
 NUM 8 ERS AT WORK A NIl PlAY

theory of evolution that ha d been thrown

'Nothing is more up by th e e.xperimental work on inheritance
dangerous than to live of the Austrian hotanist G regor M endel.

I,.
in the temperamental
atmosphere of a
Gallup Poll, always
taking one's
• •
.:
th e experimental group, and the random
all ocation of individuals to the control or
experim ental group, em e r~,''C d as stan dard
procedure during the early years of the 20th
cenlliry. [n parriL'Uiar, th e Briti sh geneticist
and statistician Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
(1890- 1962) reshaped experiment design in
many fields , including p~ych o l o gy, medicine
and ecology in th e years after the Second
Wo rld War. I-I e began hi s research in
geneti cs, where h e used statistical analysis
t o reconcil e incon sisten cies in Darwin 's
H e devel oped the method - which now
seems ridiculously obviou s - of
varying only One condition in an
exp eriment at a tim !! and
comparing re~lllts with a control
group. Although earli er
exp erimenters had donc thj s to
som e degree, it was fclt to be
immoral where human subjects
were concerned, and so rigorous
use of control groups and
random allocation of individuals
t o the control or experimental
group had not been pra cti sed
previously. Fisher also advocated
repeatin g experiments and
T be IrrJara lld rill/dum IIl1mber geuerrlrm' developed
by Bob l\1 w de ill 1996 produced n m dmll II l1mbel'S
Jlsillg a ro mpllrer program seetkd wirb digiral
pborograpbs of tbe parterlls produced by !twa lumpr.

THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING RANDOM

It is not only in sampling that randomness is actively sought. In g ames of chance for high
stakes, there is an im perative to make sure that events that are supposed to be random are
in fact just that. Cryptography also demands randomly generated numbers. This is much
harder than it at first appears. As chaos theory demonstrates, many events that look random
are actually not, but are governed by complex laws and a la rge num ber of variables.
The systems used to pick numbers fo r large-scale gambling ventures such as national
lotteries are very carefully designed and engineered to remove, as far as pOSSible, all bias in
the selection methods. It is very difficult to produce com puter algorithms fo r picking random
numbers, so most lotteries use mechanical methods instead. (These also have the advantage
of looking more spectacular than computers.) Computers that can generate genuinely
random numbers do so using a physic.:!1 source such as atmospheric noise (e .g.,
www.random.org),

182
 STATl s n CAl MAT11(M ATICS

looking at the variation in

results to determine the
margin of error. The most
influential statistician of the
20th century, Fisher
summed up his findings in
the highly innuenrial text
Statistimi Il1rthods fllld
Scientific JIIJrrcnce (1956).
One of his most important
developments was in the
analysis of variance (called
A.l'\fOVA) which looks at the
points in a sample which
vary from the norm. It is
used to assess whether or not
results are stati stically
significant - that is, whether
they are likely to reflect a real trend, change Bririsb mtlrhelflilticiall Johll C(}/rwny's 'Cmlle of ufr'
or cause, or whether they could have come quickly gaill~d II mit folkr<l·illg hy "mllliltillg life,
about by chance. dertrh /lIld cbtlllgr ill (I 'society oflivillg orgllllisms '.

COMPUTERIZATION early education on crime rates, the likely

The hurden of calculating with very large
sets of dam has becn made easier by the
widespread use of compurcrs . Mile earlier
statisticians had the laborious task of
carrying Out calculations for each data point
by hand, their modern counterparts can
feed all their data directly into a computer
and lcave it to apply the necessary statistical
tools and provide the analysis and graphs.
Often, the data are even collected by
computers directly from sensors. \Vc can
now handle inUllense data sets, so large that
thcy could not have bcen handled in a whole
lifetime without computcrs. It means that
statistical analysis can be applied in all areas
of life, detcrmi ning patterns and projecting
outcomes in areas as diverse as the effect of
spread of epidemic disease and the effl-'ctS of
global warming.
A famous illustration of the importance
of initial conditions is J ohn Conway's
'Game of Life' (1970). This is a cel lular
automaton - a computer simulation of an
evolving population or universe in which an
initia l organism or automaton makes copies
of itself which succeed or f:I il accordi ng to
various conditions (~l.Ich as overcrowding,
lack of resources, etc.). Conway created it in
response to a problem presented by John
von Neumann in the 1940s relating to
constructing a machine that could make
copies of itself. T he 'Gamc of Life' is not
a game in the usual sense of the word,
in that there are no active players. After the

183
 NUMBERS AT WOR K AND PUY

SETI@HOME
The SEn project - Search for Extra·
Terrestrial Intelligence - collects radio data
from space on a continual basis, and is
starting to look also for pulses of laser light.
Its stated aim is 'to explore, understand and
explain the origin, nature and prevalence of
life in the universe'. SETI's task is to examine
the constantly growing data set for patterns
that might indicate a deliberate radio
transmission. To do this, it asks volunteers
around the world to install a screensaver
which imports chunks of data from SETI
over the Internet and processes them on
the computer while it is not being used. In
this way, SETI makes use of millions of hours LookillgfOl' riglls ofliif": nulio IlIIteimile 'which
of free computer time on personal form plll1 of the Vt-I)' ulrge An"lly /lSfrollomicuJ
computers around the world. Each PC ohmvll(01)';1I New Mexico, USA.
reports its results back to SET! and any
possible patterns are flagged fo r further R~ "" the rate of formation of stars suitable
investigation. An unimaginably large task in for the development of intelligent life.
statistical analysis is being carried out at fp '" the fraction of those stars with
very little cost and much more quickly than planetary systems.
it could be managed using dedicated ne '" the number of planets in each solar
computers. system with an envi ronment suitable for
life.
The SETI equation fl '" the fraction of suitable planets on which
The Drake equation (1961) is suggested as a life actually appears.
way of calculating the likely number of ptanets fi .. the fraction of life.bearing planets on
that have intelligent life in the Milky Way: which intelligent life emerges.
N '" R* X fp x ne X fl X fi X fc x l fc '" the fraction of civilizations that
develop a technology that releases
where detectable signs of their existence into
N '" the number of civilizations in the Milky space.
Way whose electromagnetic emissions are l '" the length of time these civilizations
detectable. release detectable Signals.

,8<
 STATISTI CA L MATHE MATICS

'Nothing in the universe is unique and a/one, and therefore in other regions there must be
other Earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breeds of beasts,' lucretius, SOse

instigatOr sets up initial conditions, the
game runs, producing generations that
flourish or perish according to the
consequences of the starting conditions.
The original game used populations of
coloured squares III a grid, but it
spawned a whole industry of computer
simulation games, some of them immensely
complicated, that produce populations of
creatures or other entities. The interest in
cellular automata that grew out of Conway's
game has found applications in many fields,
including research into human, animal and
\'iral populations, growth of crystals,
economic problems and many other areas in
which complex patterns develop organically.
MOVING ON
Much of the work on statisric'5 in the last
hundred years or SO has led to analysis of
groups or sets of data in quite complex
ways. The hehaviour of sets - whether of
numbers or anything else - is the suhject of
set theory, fi~t developed in the second
half of the 19th century. The appearance
of set theory has heen one of the most
important developments in the history of
mathematics.

185
CHAPTER 8

The death of
NUMBERS

AnalY.l.ing data gathered from populations,

experiments and other sources leads to a search
for patterns that can be used to categorize and
group items. The natural result of this is to
divide items into sets and compare these.
Everything in the universe can be defined by its
membership of sets.
Relationships between these sets gives
further infonnation about the objects. \¥hen
mathematicians turned to set theory at the
end of the 19th century, they fOlmd a rich lode
that would provide methods for dealing with
everything.
As set theory developed, it built a logical
language of its own that was eventually turned
back on itself. Set theory could be used, it
appeared, to explore mathematics, to prove
mathematical theorems and even to dissect and
analyze set theory. It allowed mathematics to
encompass everything and yet to become so
abstrdct and abstruse that it apparently dealt
with nothing.

SEF! (page 184) aims to idemify I' milsn ofphllldS 'U'bicb bost lift.
 TH1 D EATH O f NUM8£RS
Set theory
At the very beginning of the history of
numbers heforc humankind began
counting, it is likely that people compared
set~ of object~ - are there enough spe~rs for
hunters to have one each? Arc there more
or fewer sheep in the pen than pebblc.~ in
the tally pile? A~ the requirementS of
hum:mkind bl'c~me sophisriC:Jted,
m ~thcmatics moved away fi-om these setS of
objects, ut'vc1oping a concept of numher
that could be applied universally. Now,
thousands of years l~tcr, mathematicians
have returned to sets, hut with a new insight
- the possihiliry of an infinite set.
OR I GINS O F SET THEORY
Set rhL'Ory was developed by Georg l..antor
between 1S74 ~nd 1879. He defined a set as
a collection of definite, Jistinguisb~ble
'objects of perception or thought' th~t were
conceived as a whellt' entiry. So there is a scr
of positive imegers which can be thought of
~ s ~n object in its own right. But there is
also a set of people who arc employed ~s
firemen, a set of molecular structures that
form hydrocarbolls, and so on. Although
INSULTS FLY
Amongst the insults hurled at Cantor and set
theory were that it was a 'grave disease'
infecting mathematics (Poincare), that it was
'utter nonsense', 'laughable' and 'wrong'
and that mathematics was 'ridden through
and through with the pernicious idioms of
set theory' (Wittgenstein), and that Cantor
was a 'scientific charlatan', 'renegade' and
'corrupter of youth' (Kronecker).
188
the basic principle is e.nrcmcly simple,
logical thought about sets soon leads into
complicated co ncepts that blur the
boundary between math ematics and
philosophy. Early critics ~rgued th~t set
thl'Ory de~1t only with fictions, not with
~llything th~t reflected re~Jity, th~t it
violated the principles or religion and th~t it
was not mathematic~1. [t is true that set
theory is a hr3llcb of pure mathematics that
has little ~pplic~tion to ordi ll ~ry e:\llericnce
aod the everyday world. It has proved
immensely valuable, however, in enabling:
manipulation ()f complieated mathematical
concept~. Set theory is itself eapahle of
heing defined, analyzed and refined by
applying the logic of setS to its concepts .
SETS FOR BEGINNER S
The fund~mental concept of sct.~ is very
simple. Any group of ohjITt5 or numhers,
whetber or not they h~\'c real or enduring
existence, forms a set. Any indi\,idual
member of a set may be a mt'mher of m~ny
sets. Sets overlap, and some contain other
sets (subsets). A set may have all infinite
number of members, in which case it is an
infinite set.
Arithmctic with sets is nOt quite
equivalent to arithmetic with numbers. If
two set~ arc ~dded togethcr (called the
union of set.~), the new set eo mprises all the
members of hoth sct~ but with no duplicate
entries. The intersection of two set~
comprises the members that are in hoth
sets. A set with nu members is a null set,
designated by 0.
In general, the order of clements in a sd
is not rcle\~Jnt. So whi le the coordin~te
pairs (x, y) and (y, x) are not the same,
 UTTHfORY

GEORG FERDINAND LUDWIG PHILIPP CANTOR (1845- 1919)

Georg Cantor , German friends. Their exchange of letters brought
mathematician who is best known as the Cantor to his most important work, on sets
creator of set theory. His parents were and the concept of transfinite numbers. He
Danish, but settled in Frankfurt in faced considerable opposition from
1856. His mathematical ability l eopold Kronecker (1823- 91),
became obvious during his who blocked publication of his
early teens. Cantor went to work and his advancement
university in Berlin and within the univerSity.
Zurich to stu dy Kronecker had previously
mathematics, philosophy been Cantor's mentor, but
and physics. He was now believed Cantor's work to
taught by Weierstrass, meaningless and the
whose influential work on transfinite numbers he was
analysis impressed Cantor. His writing about to have. no existence.
PhD thesis, submitted after a single Opposition came from the ChurCh, too,
term, had the title In mathematics the art of which fel t his work challenged the unique
asking questions is more valuable than infinity of God. This opposition made
solving problems. He became a professor at Cantor particularly sympathetic to young
Halle in 1879. scholars later in life, whom he helped and
Cantor worked first on theory 01 encouraged in the face of an entrenched
numbers, then tumed to the theory of and resistant system.
trigonomctric series and extended the work Cantor's work established set theory as a
of Bernhard Riemann. He met Richard branch of mathematics and laid the
Dedekin ( 1831-1916) while on his groundwork for much of the development
honeymoon and the pair became lifelong in mathematics in the 20th cen t ury.

rh e sets {x, yJ :Ind [y, x} :Ire id enrit~JI. The condition x E A is true only if x
Cantor's definition of a set was that it is a meets the conditions of the formula
grouping into on e entity of
objects of any type, though
t":3ch ObjCl·t 3i.<;O rer:tins it.~ 'Nowadays it il known 10 be possible, logically speaking, to
own identity. For3nyobjcctx derive practically the whole of known mathematin from a
in; relation to a set A i.~ 3lw3Ys single source, The Theory of Sell. '
that it is or is nor 3 member - Nicolas Bourbaki, 1939
~ hown by x E A or x f£A

"9
 TH1 D EATH O f NUM8£RS

BERTRAND RUSSEll <1872- 1970)

Bertrand Russell was a British mathematician
and philosopher; bom into an aristocratic
family. He was orphaned at six and
brought up by his grandmother, home-
tutored and isolated from other children.
He went to Trinity College, Cambridge to
read mathematics, but changed after a
short time to philosophy. Much of his
philosophical work was on the philosophy
of mathematics.
He was influenced by Weierstrass,
Dedekir1d and Cantor who all wanted a
formal, logical basis for mathematics. Russell
aimed to prove with Principia Mathematica
that mathematics was nothing but logic. himself. Who shaves the barber? logicians
However, he discovered a paradox which have found different ways of adapting set
he simply could not resolve except theory to deal with the paradox, which
by redefining the basis of logic a barber attempt to make the definition of a set more
says he shaves everyone who does not shave restricted and precise.

Sex) which defines members of the set. This
is the principle of abstraction . That a set is
defined by its members is the principle of
extension. The number of elements in a set
i~ called its cardinal number - the set {4, 5,
6) has a c-ardinal number of 3. The cardinal
numhel· of a Set A is wrinen A. Any subset
of a finite set has a smaller cardinal number
than the original set. If we imagine a set of
'all cars', there are clearly fewer members in
thc subset 'red cars'.
WORk i NG WITH INFINITY AGAIN
The concept of equivalence - that hI'o sets
are equivalent if they have the .~ame number
of members - does not depend on the. sets
being finite. So the sct of positive integers
and the set of negative integers are infinite
but equivalcnt setS, since there is a negative
inwger to match every positive integer. A~
Cantor quickl), realized (and others,
including Galileo, had realized before him),
each natural number can be squared, so
there is an infinite set of natural numbers
and an infinite set of their squares. Yet thc
squarcs are a subset of the set of natural
numbers. Galileo's conclusion in 163H had
been that the conceptS of 'equal to', 'grt':ltcr
than' and 'less than' did not apply to
infinity. But Cantor developed instead a

190

concept of transfinite numhers which
ret'ognized different sizes of infinity.
AXIOMS AGAIN
Attempts to deal with paradoxes at the heart of
Sl't theory led to the devdopmem of axiomatic
set rheory. Thi~ aims to develop axioms to
FornI thl' ground rules for set thl'ory, much as
Eudid'.5 axioms form the grOlmd rules for
trigonometry. Severa l conOicting sets of
axioms have heen prOJ»:ied, tOO complex to
go into here. The b:lsic (yiteria for :lxiom~ are
that they should be
• consistent: it should not be possihk to
prove a statement and its opposite
• plausible: they should accord with gt!ner:ll
beliefs about sets
• c:lp:lblt' of producing re~ults of Cantorian
.~et theory.
Axiomatic set theory is further divorced
from the real world than CantOrian (or
' nai've') set theory since it requires no
knowledb"C of what the sets discussed arc. It
concentrate:; only on rcl:nions between sets
and their properties in a rather ncbu l o\L~
way that gives fuel to the few
mathematicians who still claim set theo ry
deals with nonexistent fictions.
Set theory has influenced many areas of
:!Oth century mathematics, but rem:lins in
runllOil. Th e search for acceptable axioms
rec-ollls the difficulties faced by b'eollleters
trying to find n cw models and rules for non -
Euclidean geometries, hut so far is a long
way off resolutiOn.
(;etting fuzzy
At the heart of set theory is the apparently
simple rule that an object either is or is nOt
G£TT1NG FUUY
a member of a set. Aesop's fahle of the
tOrtoise and the hare, like Zeno's paradox of
Achilles and the tortoise, pits a fast and slow
contestant in a race against each other.
Both the han~ and thl' tortoise arc
memhers of the set 'animals'. The hare is a
member of the suhst't 'mammals'; tht
tortoise is a memher of the subset 'reptilc.~'.
Now suppose we had a set of'fust animals'.
\Ve might say the hare is a member and the
tortoise is not. But th is is a subjective
judgement and proves more difficult with
some other animals. \Vh:lt about a dog - is
it a fJSt animal? Or a sn;]ke? Or a girJffe?
\Ve are likely to say that thL1' arc somewhar
fast, or quite fJSL H ow~"er, set membership
is binary - either an animal is fast or it is
not. Thi s is dC:lrly problematic :IS it
requires an absolute L·ut-off point that is not
necessarily satisfactory. If we say that an
animal which can run;]t 15 mile~ an hour is
fa.5t, then an animal which can run at 14.95
miles an hour is nOt fast; the distinction
begins to look silly.
CATERING FOR IMPRECISION
AristOtle identified tht' problem of the
'excluded middle' - the objects that can be
cbssified as ncither o ne thing nor another (a
slightly fast animal, for example). But
mathematics had no way of dealing \\~th th e
in dcreml in :nc, :md rhe middl e ground
remained excluded until the 20th centulY
Bertrand Russell, in his paradoxL'S of tht'
barber who mayor may not shave himself
and the set that contains aJI sets, highliglned
the problem again, showing it as a
contradiction in set thL'Ory.
In the 1nOs, the PQli~h logician Jan
Lukasiewicz worked out the principl es of
191
 TH{ D EATH O f NUM8£RS
multivalued logic, in which st;}remenL~ (:',1Il
t;}ke a fractional truth v;}lue between I
(wholly true) and 0 (wholly false). In 1937,
philosopher Max Black applied llluitivalued
logic to setS of objects and drew the
first 'fuzzy' set cUJ"\les; he called thc.se
see; 'vague'.
From these outlines, the American
mathematician Lotfi Zadeh developed the
concept of fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets in
1965. Thtse pro,~(k a way of working with
imprecise values and categories. There is
some disagreement ahout the validity and
nature of fuzzy theory. Some
mathematicians see it as a variation Oll
probability theory. which can. be called
possibility theory; others see proba hility as a
specia 1 ease of possibility in which certainty
can be applied.
Fuzzy COUNTIN G
The di.~rinction we saw early on betweCIl
counting and measuring addresses the
problem of things which do not full wholly
into one set or another. InstL'll.d of an
clement belonging to ;} set or not belonging
to it - a binary distinction, with values of
either 0 (nor a member) or 1 (a member) -
fuzzy seL~ can support dcgrc/;:s of
membership. Membership of a SCt can have
a value between (amI including) 0 and I.
So in a set of fast animals, a cheet:lh
may have a membership value of I,
Achilles a membership v:1lue of 0.5, and a
tortoise a membership ,'aim' of 0.1 .
Something which does not move at ~ II, like
a m~ture barn~clc, would h~ve ~ value of 0
~nd not be a member of the set.
Fuzzy thL'Ory makes use of linguistic
c:ltegories, such :IS '!iOmewhat', 'quite' and
192
'very'. So an animal might be very fast, or
quite fast. If 0.6 membe.rship of the set of
fast ~nimals i~ called 'quite fast', 0.8
membership might be 'very bst'. Fuzziness
is nOt ~bout uncertainty, but about the
vagllc b{)und~ries between categorit:S.
Fuzzy sct~ may overlap . So an animal
might h~ve 0.2 membership of the set 'fust
~nimals' and 0.8 membership of the set
'slow anim~ls'. By combinin g values from
more than one set, useful inform~tion can
he gained that gives ::t better description of ;\
situation or object th~n the straightforward
binary membership/nollmembership of a
conventional set.
Some. but nOt all, of the mathematics of
conventional sctS apply to fuzzy sets. In
fuzzy seL~. ;}n object may be a member of
two complementary sets (such ~s slow
animals ~nd f~st ~nim~L~), wherc;}s in
conventional sct theory this :is not possible.
The only restricti~m is t hat its tutal
membership v::tlue for the two sets ~dds up
to 1 (such as 0.1 fast and 0.8 slow).
USING FUZZINESS
Fuzzy logic is the ::tpplication of fuzzy SCL~ to
decision making and computer programs. It
is used in m~ny enb~neering control ~y~tems
to approximate human judgement ~nd m~ke
the operation of a device ad~pt to prevailing
t'ondi[ions. It is commonly used in
consumer eleerronics, household ~ppliances
~nd vehicles. A di6rit~1 c~mera, for ex~mplc,
uses sensors to dcternline the light lcvc.ls
~l1d the {)hjecL~ in the \~ew which the
phot(Jgr~phcr is likely to want to fiH-"Us on
(from detecting the edges of object.~), then
adjusts focus ~nd t':."lJOsure ~ppropri~tcly. A
washing maehine determines the best
 G£TT1NG FUUY

fL>atures for the wash L'),cle

from the quantity of washing SENDAI SUBWAY
and how dirty it is, for In 1988 Hitachi produced a fuzzy logic system to run
example. It will calculate subway trains in Sendai, Japan. The trains need only iI
optimum amounts of snap conductor and no driver. The fuzzy logic .system controls
and water, the best acceleration, cruise speed and braking, taking into account
temperature and the Itngth SiI(ety, comfort, fuel efficiency and the need to stop
of wa.~h required. The first accurately at target positions (station platforms).
system controlled by fuzzy
logic was created by
Ebrahim A1all1dani and Seto Assilian at refuted diagnosis can thell be fed back into
Queen .Mary College, London in tbe early the s},stt'm to improve irs future
t 970s. They wrote a set of heuristic rules performance.
for eomrolling tbe opm-ation of a small Sets - fuzzy and classical - have
steam t:Ilgine and boiler, then used fuzzy redefined mathematics fO I" the 10th and 11 St
setS to c{)nvert the rules intO an algorithm to centuries. In SOllle ways, they have allowed
control the system. The first commercial mathematics to be divorced from the real
use of a fuzz.y ~)'stCIl] was to control a world. Higher set tbeory deals not with
cement factOry in Copenhagen, Denlll:lI"k in numhers or OhjecL~ in the wurld, but with
1980. Exploration and uses of fuzzy logic concepts and relations bt'tween cuncepts.
increased massively in the 19)30s, especially YCt in accommodating the imprecision and
in Japan. contingenL), of the real world set theory,
Fuzzy logic is not only used in control like &accds, it acknowlcdbFt'S the 'roughne.'iS'
but also III expert systems, artificial of the rcal world and provide.~ a more
intelligence and ~lpplicatio ns such as voice accurate (if messier) model of reality than
recognition and image processing softwarc. earlier mathematics.
It tries to minimize the human intervention
needed in a systt'm by approximating MOVIN G ON
human judgel1lenL For this it needs an Set theory works '.\';th mathematil-s far
expert human to set up the rules on which divorced from numbers. A~ it docs so, it
judgements are uased. uut intelligent IlL-tomes increasingly dependent upon
systems t':111 then improve themselves oy logic. Although it may seem that logic has
learning from adjustments an operatOr hcen at the heart of mathematics from the
makes to the settings that the system start - after all, Euclid attL'mprcd to deri,,(-
chooses. [n diagnostic medicine, for all geumetry througb a sequence of logical
example, 3 fuzzy systcm can look at all the steps - the applicatiun of logic was neither
symptoms reportcd or monitOred in a rigorous nor closely examined until the 19tb
patient and assess the likdihood of different century. Set thL'Ory, it tunled out, could he
diagnoses based on tht' deb'Tt'e to which applied to devc.loping the logic needed to
t:'aeh symptom is preSt'nt. A confirmt'd or give mathematics firm foundations.

193
CHAPTER 9

PROVING IT

As in law, evetything in mathematics must be

proven before it is accepted as true. Even the
most blatantly obvious ' facts ' arc not accepted
as facts unless a mathematician can provide a
rigorous proof. It is not enough to put one
apple with another apple to show that one plus
one equals two: it must be proven that one plus
one always equals two, that there are no cases
in which one and one might make one , or zero,
or three, or 1.7453.
Often, it is much harder to prove
something than to discover it and decide that it
is almost certainly true. Sometimes, it takes
many centuries for a theorem to be proved, as
in the case of Fermat's Last Theorem. But it is
the proof that defines a theorem - it must be
possible to demonstrate its truth through a line
of logical reasoning from axioms and other
established theorems.

Tbar rb~ filII bar ah~}ayf ,·isell ir I/O proofir ,rill rire tomorl"/JW.
 P ROV I NG IT
Problems and proofs
It took Jakob Bernoulli 20 years to prove
that tossing a coin a large number of times
will give close to a 50:50 split between
hl':Jds and tails - yet as he pointed Out, th e
result is olwious to anyone. \Vhy did he
hother? And why did it rake So long?
Although the Ancient Egyptians and
Babylonians were content to work with
specific examples :lnd problems, tht Greeks
moved towards theorems ~nd axioms
that muld be aJlplied uni\'crsally - they
demanded proof. Proving th~t ~n idea holds
true requires some kind of logical
theoretical treamu:nt, since it is [JOt possible
to try Out all Jlossible eases - to test
Pythab'oras' theorem for all possihle right-
angled triangles, for e.x~mp le.
Proof~ aim to find fruitful relations hips
between mathematical statements ~nd
objects. For this reason, even theorems
wbich h~vc been adequately proven in the
paSt - slich as Pytha gor~s' tbeorem - may be
proven anew, opening up fresh avenue,>:; for
exploration. Over time, simpler proo(~ ~re
di~covercd and the earli er, often
cumbersome, proo f can be replaced.
Many developments in mathematics
came about as the result of people tcsting
and Dying to prove theorems and axioms
and even doubting long-h eld beliefu. The
dispute over Euclid's fifth poStulate, for
in~tance. was th e spur to much of the
'Nobody blames a mathematician if the first
proof of a new theorem ;! dum!y. '
Paul Erdos
196
'Ead! problem that I solved became a rule
which served afterwards to solve other
problems.'
Rene Descartes
progress made in geometry and ultimately
to the emergence of new, non-Euclidean
geometries in the 19th century.
Rigour in m~thematical proof increased
at the end of tbe 19th ct'ntury when
mathematics and logic t~me together. A
sy~1:elll~tic nOtation for logic came to be
used by marhematicians and some
philosophers. The development of se t
theory required a method of representing:
logical relationships ~nd a way of dealing
with concepts which did not necessarily
involve any numbers ~t alL Set thec.lry even
becaml' a useful ml'aIlS of demon.strating
matJlL"m~ticaJ theorems.
UN BELIEVA BLE PR O OFS
A famous problem th~t produces a proof
which many people find hard to accept is
the Monty Hall paradox. Named after the
host of a US game show, it goes like this:
Suppose (/ gtJme s};ow host shows yOIl thn:c
doors. Behil/d 11UO of thrill tho·r is II golft;
behilld the /ost there is a etll". Tbe horl
illvites yOIl to pick 11 dQQI: He will tbfIJ
open nl/other door, rt'vrnlil1g (/ gont , ([lid
giVl' you the chnllc/'. to change YOl/r cboice.
IYill YOllr dUll/ITS of7ll illlli1lg be impmved
ifYOII S1J,·itc/J doors? (rbe problem nSSllmes
tlmt YOII would rntber hove tI {tn· tl}(ln
n gont)

Most people say their chances of getting a car
are unaffected if they switch doors.
Mathematicians say that the chance of getting
the car is increased if you switch doors: you
had a 1 in 3 chance of choosing a car, 3nd this
is unaffeCted by the opt'ning of another door;
the chance that you chosc COrrL-ctly is still 1 in
3. If you switch, you 3rc making a new choice,
where the chances arc I in 2. Switching will
get you a C3f 50 per cent of the time, bur
st3ying with the first door will yidd a C3r only
33 per cent of the time. The logic is easier IP
follow if you think of 1,000 duors with goats
behind 999 of them. Your chances of picking
the door with the car the first rime are 1 in
1,000. After 998 b'03ts have llCen released IP
run amok, there is a 1 in 2 chance that the
other door hides the car.
The obvious objection here is that there
must 31so be 3 1 in 2 chance that the original
door hides the. car, since prohabilitit!S must
add IIp t(J one. The trick is that the problem
is nOt as it appears. Your choice i~ r3ndom,
hut the host IWOWJ where the C3r is. If the
host randomly opened doors, coincidentally
picking those that conce31ed goats, the
ch3llce of finding a car 3t the end would be
the same as the chance of finding a goat,
whether or nOt you switched doors.
The proof of this problem uses
mathematical notation to show
probabilities and break~ it down into small ,
logical Steps which naturally follow one
from 3nother. This is how mathCIll3tici:ln.~
now demonstrate truth. But it has not
always been the case.
EARLY PROOFS
The earliest known mathem3tical proofS
arc said to have been provided by Thalcs.
PR O BLEMS ANO PR OOfS
Tradition maintains that Thales pro\'ed th3t
the angles 3t the base of an isosceles triangle
are equal, that 3 diameter CutS a circle inll)
two equal parts, that opposite angles formed
h}' two intersecting line.5 arc equal 3nd tha
two triangles arc identical if any twO angles
and one ~ide arc t:qual Sint:t' nonc of
Thall'S' writings survives, it is impossihle to
S3Y whether he really produced rigorous
proofs of these theorems. Around fifty years
latcr, Pyrh3goras proved his theorem for
right-angled triangles.
Since the time of Thales and
Pythagoras, the basis of proof In
mathematics has been to derive more
complicated Statements from faCtS which
are apparently simpler (though they may
not actually be simpler). Genemlly,
anything 1ll ge(.lllu~ try that C3n be
demonstrated in clear, logic31 steps from
Euclid '.~ postulates counL5 3S proven, for
instance. Bllt this does not mean that a new
idea is deduced first from the existing f.1Cts.
Mathematicians commonly h3vc the idea
DEDUCTIVE PROOF THAT 1 '" 2
let a '" b. So it follows that
a' '" ab
a1 +a' =a' +ab
2a' =a ' + ab
2a' - 2ab=a ' + ab _ 2ab
2a' _ 2ab", a'_ ab
This ciln be rewritten as
2(a' _ ab) '" 1 (a ' _ ab)
Dividing bot h sides by a' - ab gives
2=1
197
 P ROVIN G IT

first - perhaps as an intuition, or as the Greeks out was refined and defined
something suggt'srcd by the re~1Jlts of an more rigorously much later is indirect
experimcnt or an !;!xploration - and then proof. There are several types of indirect
turn to the known fact.~ to prove it. proof, including proof by contradiction and
Sometimes, an attempt to find proof refutes proof by reductio ad absurdulJI. Proof by
the new theory and it must be rejected . contradiction aims to prove a statement is
Sometimes, finding a proof appears an true by showing that itS opposite is nOt trut'.
intractahlt' problem and the theorem Proof by redllctio fld abSlmillni aims to prove
rt'mai ns unproven - for hundreds of years in a statement is true by using it to prove
somt' cascs. untrue something that is known to be true
(so producing an absurd result). Hipassus'
PROOF BY DEDUCTION proof of the existence of irrational num hers
Proof hy deduction works in small steps to was all indirect proof and is the earli est
deduce new truths from known truth~. For known.
example, if we say. 'Humans are mammals'
and ' Peter is a human' we can then say. PROOF BY INDUCTION
'Peter is a mammal' . Deduction is nl)[ The Greek model of proof was followed by
wholly reliahle, even if the initial StatementS the Arab mathematicians and taken over
are genuinely true, as the reasoning may nOt from them in the Middle Ages by early
be valid. So we might say, 'Humans arc European scholars. But in [575 a new
mammals' and 'Peter is a
mammal', therefore 'Perer is
:::t human' - but the fir.~t All HORSES ARE THE SAME COLOUR
statementS would al.~o he The Hungarian mathematician George Pa[ya (1887-1985)
true if Peter were a dog or a used proof by induction to show that all horses are the
hamstt'r or any other same colour. The case fo rn '" 1 (one horse) is dear - a horse
mammal. Proof by deduction can only be the same colour as itself. Now assume the
is nOt accepted as sufficiently theory is correct for n "" m horses. We have a set of m
rigormL~ by modern horses, all the sameco[ou r (1, 2, 3, ... m). There isa second
mathematicians, though it set of (m + 1) horses (1, 2, 3, .. . m + 1). We take out one
was used extensively by the horse from this last set, so that it contains horses (2, 3, .
Ancient Greek..; :mcl by m + 1). The two sets overlap; this second set is a set of m
medieval mathematicians. horses, which we know is a set of horses the same colour.
Parmenides is credited with By the principle of induction we can continue this for all
the first proof by deduction further horses, therefore all horses are the same colour.
in the 5th cenrury Be The argument is, of course, invalid as the statement is not
true. The crucial point is that when n '" 2 the stat£'ment does
INDIRECT PROOF not hold true: fo r this value, the sets do not overlap (the first
Another meth od of proof contains only horse 1, the second contains only horse 2).
which also originated with

198
 PROB U MS ANO PR OOfS

DAVID HILBERT (1862- 1943)

David Hilbert is considered one of the most He began as a pure mathematician and,
influential mathematicians of the 19th when he turned his attention to
and 20th centuries. He was born 1912, was
in East Prussi a in lin area that is what he
now part of Russia. As a considered the sloppy
student, he met Hermann approach to math~ taken
Minkowski and the two by most physicists.
stayed lifelong friends, Hilbert also devised a
cross-fertilizing each conceptual space that
other's mathematical had infinite dimensions
ideas. (called a Hilbert space).
Hilbert worked in many and his students
to the maths
for his contributions to the behind Einste.in's Theory of
axiomatization of mathematics. Relativity and quantum mechanics.

modd emcrg~d; in Ar;lbmeticorlfnl Libri
Dllo Francesco Maurolico (1494-15 75) b'llVC
thc fi n;;t known description of mathematical
induction, though him.~ of this method can
be found earlier in worh by Bhaskara :md
:ll-Karaji (C.AD lOOO). Proof by inductio n
was also developed independen tly by Jako b
Bernoulli, Blai se Pascal and Pi erre
de Fermat.
Proof by induction works by showin g
firstly tim a hypothesis holds true for a first
value (often n = I), then that it holds true for
a later value (.~'ay n '" Ill) and also for the
following value (n '" m + I). From the
demonstration that it holds trw: for n '" III
and n '" m + I it can be interred that this
process could he repeated indefinitely to
prove that it holds true for all further values.
It's a bit like a row of dominoes, arranged on
end and equally spaced SO that if one falls It
will knock the next over. If knocking th e
fir.~ t do mino ovcr causcs til e ncxt to fall, it
will in evit:lbly follow that they will all fall.
A1aurolico used proof by induction to
demonstrate that the sum of the first 11 odd
imeb't'rs is n ~ :
1
1 + 3 + .5 + 7 + 9 + ... n -'" n
ASKING QUESTIONS
VVith the advcnt of calculus, complex numbers
and later non-Euclidean bTL'Omctri es, more
and morc W:lS denllUlded of proof. Berkel ey's
o bjection to calcu lus as dealing with th"
'ghosts of quantitiL'S' was :I spur to greater
rigour, nOt o nly in definin g the quantities and
concepts with which mathematicians were
working but in providing proofs.

199
 P ROVIN G IT

Greeks. The earliest

IGNORANCE EQUALS W ISDOM rigorolL~ writer Oil logic,
in 1945, a boy in eighth grade taking part in a maths Pbru, died ill 347 or 348m:.
Olympiad in Russia won first prize even though he did not Plato presents his
attempt to solve even one problem. The prize was philosophical works in the
awarded on the basis of a remark he submitted with an foml of dialogues, o r
unfinished proof: con\'ers~tions, between
' I spent much time trying to prove that a straight line philosophers. They read as
can't intersect three sides of a triangle in their interior argum~nrs, with each
points but failed for, to my consternation, I realized that I participant putting fiJn\'ard
have no notion 01 what a straight line is.' his case in a series of
Statements which his
opponent tht!l1. r~futes and
Bur it '\~JS the 19th century which s:).w he thell defends. The argument uecomt::s
the b'Teat revolution in mathematic:).l proof int:rea~ing:ly l"Olllple.x as the subject is
as new methods of logic were developed and tackled rigorously. This m ethod, called
people for the first time tried to apply dialectic, fonned the model for logical
formal logic to mathematics. This requi.red debate until the ."'liddle Ages. Although
a reassessment of the very basis of logic was a major conCl~m of these medieval
mathematics and brought mathematics and scho lars, they did not think to apply it to
philosophy rugNher. Mathematici:).ns, mathematics. It took more than 2,000 years
unsettled Ly rL'Cem discoveries that threw for logic and mathematics to come together
long-aL'Cepted truths into doubt, sought properly.
new proof~ and questioned L"Vcn the most
fundamental ideas underpinning their MATHEMATICS BECOMES LOGI CAL
discipline. Suddenly, nothing could be taken One of the first ru tadde the issue was the
for granted . Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano
(1858- 1932). H e wanted to develop the
Being logical whole of mathematics from fundamental
At the end of the 19th century and starr of propositions using formal log:ic . He
the 20th century there was a flurry of developed a lo&,;c notation, butal~o a hybrid
interest in the applieation of logi e to intern~tiollal lan6ruage which he hoped
mathematics or, more precisely, the would be used for scho larship. Called
derivation of mathematics frOm logic. It lnt~rlin~,'ua, it was based un the vocabulary
came about largdy as a rcsult of rapid of Latin, French, German and English, but
changes in mathematics and irs applications, used a very simple grammar. His use of it
and critici sms of its rigour and \':llidity. hindered the acceptance of his
Proof in mathematics is only parr of thc mathematical work.
larger tOpic of logic which has developed The breakthrough III relating
and grown since the time of the Ancient mathematic.~ to logi c came wlth the work of

'00

the German logician and mathematician
Gotdob Frege (1848- 1925), who has
sometimes been called the gre:lt~t IObrici:ln
since Aristotle. He set out to prove that all
arithmetic could he derived logically from a
set of hasic axioms and he is essentially the
founder of mathematical logic. H i:' devised a
way of represenring IObric using varia hIes
and functions.
A SEARCH FOR NEW AXIOMS
The German mathematician Davit! I·Elbert
laid the foundations for the formalist
movement that grew upin the 20th century
by requiring that all mathematics should
depend on fundamental axioms from whieh
everything else ean be proven. He required
any syStem to he both complete :lnd
consistent, incapable of throwing up any
contradictions fi-om the application of its
axioms. He reformulated Euclid'.~ axioms
himself as the fir.~t step in trying to find this
faultless axiomatic basis for maths. Hilhert
ramously proposed 23 problems which were
still to be solved in 1900. Th~e effectively
set Ollt the agenda for 20th century
mathematicians.
The mOSt important of Hilbert's
problems for the dL'Velopment of logie in
mathematics is the second . Hc proposes
that it is neeessary to ser up a systcm of
axio ms 'wh ich contains all exact and
complete descrip tion' of the relations
between basic ideas and requires ' that
they are not contradictory, that is, that
a definite number of logical steps based
upon them can never lead to contradictory
resultS'. In parricular, this was seen as a
call for axioms to prove the basics of
Peano arithmetic.
B U NG LOG ICAL
An~...vering Hilbert's call for an axiomatic
basis for all mathematics. Bertrand Russell
and Alfred North Whitehead published the
three-volume PriIJfipia A1atbrmflfica in
1910- 13. Ambiriously named after
NeWtOn's seminal work with the same title,
the book aims to deriw all of mathematics
from a sct of hasic a.xioms using the
."ymbolic logic set forth by Frege. It CO\'Crs
only set theory, cardinal numbers, ordinal
numbers and real numbers. A planned
volume to cover breomt:'-try w"as abandoned
as the authors were tired of the work. After
getting a good way into the work. Russell
discovered that a lor of the ~';J.me ground had
been covered by Frcge and he added an
appendix pointing Out the differences and
acknowled bring Fregc's prior publiL';J.tion.
The test of the Prif/cipil/ re.~ted on
whether it was complete and consistent in
H ilhert's tl'l"ms - L"1)uld a mathematica l
statement he found that could not be
proven or Jisproven by Prillcipil/'s methods,
and cCluld any contradictions be produced
using itS axioms?
MOVING THE GOALPOSTS
Before Prillcipia had a chance to stand the
test of time, the key questions were taken
away by German mathematician Kurt
COdel. He produced twO 'incompleteness
theorems' ( \ !J31) which dealt wi th Hilbert's
proposal for the <l."iomat ization of
mathematics.
The first stated that there could be no
complete and consistent set o f axioms, since
for every sufficiently powerfu l l ogic~1
."ystem there is always a statement G that
essentially reads, 'The sto\tcment G cannOt
be proved'. If Gis provaLle, then it is fu lsc
201
 P ROVIN G IT
and the system is inconsistent. If G is not
prm':l.ble, then it is true and the systcm is
incomplete. The second theorem states that
basic arithmetic cannot be used to prove it~
own statements and, by extension, can't be
used to prove a.nything more complex,
either.
lOGIC AND COMPUTERS
During the 20th centu ry, the Jt'vcl opnwnt
of computers has given logic and
mathematics a field of their own .
Computer programs use logica l sequences
to carry Out calculations. Thi s is the basis
of all computer applications, evt::Il those
that look nothing like mathematics to the
user, such as animation, music production
and imab't! processing. Computers can also
be used to test the orems. They can produce
a proof by exha ustion - which involves
trying all possihle va l ue.~ - which a human
c(JUlJ not manage. Th ere ~re, toO,
cQlllputer programs to construct proof~ by
other methods.
The program V~mpire, developed at
Manchester University hy Andrei
Voronkov, h,lS won the 'world cup for
theorem prm'crs' six timcs (1999, 2001 - 05).
Perhaps th e time has come when
computers, with their impeccahle logit, will
take over from human mathem:uici~ns as
the experts at applying logic to
mathematics, or tracing itin mathematics.
What were we talking about?
At no point in this book haw we stopped to
ask what mathematics is or if, indeed, it 'is'
anything. This might seem lik.. a
considerable oversight. But on the whok-
mathematics crept up on humanit)" made
202
itself at home with no introduction and
encouraged IL~ to build our cultural edificc
'For any consi!tent forma'- computably
enumerable theory that prove! basic
arithmetical truth J, an arithmetical
statement that is true, but not provable in
the theory, can be constructed. That is, any
effectively generated theory capable of
expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be
both comistem and complete.'
Kur t GOdel, 1931
arouud it. There was no point at which it
was scnsibl e to ask what it was all about.
At the Stan of the 20th ct'nrury,
Illathematic.~ turn ed to fundamental
questions ahout its very nature. A central
question e:1ll be hridly .~ ummarizcd as 'h
Illathematic.~ discovered or invented?'
There are three principal positiQns. A
Pl~tonist realist vic\\', such ;H that of Kurt
G6del, says that the laws of mathemati cs are
evt'rywhere true and immumble, like the
laws of nature. Ahthematicians discover
them; they are pre-exi~ting. A formalist
view, such as that taken by D~vid Hilht'rt,
says that mathematics is a codification, a
I:m!,'1lage or even a game in which theorems
are built on axioms throu gh lo gil~J l
demonstration . There is no particular
re~son to prefer onl! set of axioms over
another if both sets seem to hold true. This
\'iL'w was dealt a near-futal blow by Giidcl's
incomplett'ness thwrems which showed
that no set of axioms could be enti rely
com plett' and consistent. Finall y, the
intuitionist view holds that mathematics is

entirely a fabrication of the human mind,
construcred to explain the world we find
around us but having no existcnce or
v~lidiry outside hum~n culture. This
\'itw was propounded by the Dutch
mathcm~ticirul L. E.]. Brom\"cr (1881-1966)
and he was TcmoT~cl~sly ridiculed and
persecuted for it (not lc~st by Hilbcrt).
Ovcr the l~st hundred years, the
qucstion of the fuulllbtion of mathem~tics
has nOt becn ~lllswered, but has slipped Out
of vit-,'v. Hilbert's form~list Stance ~"Uffered
from the assault of the incompleteness
theory, yet logic ~lld axioms still lie at the
hean of m~thelll~tics as it is practised. A
more mode,f[J vicw is the empiricist one
promoted by W. V Quine (i 908-1(00) ~nd
Hilary Putn~m (born 1916). They m~intain
th~t the existence of numbers ~nd other
mathem~tic~l entities c~n he deduced from
observation of the n:::d world. It is rc\~ted to
realism, hut is morc grounded in re~liry and
human culturc.
Quine's view is that mathematics seems
tQ be 'true' bccause all our c~:pcrience and
science is wovC'n around it :tnd aJlpe~rs to
endorse it. It would be vcry difficult to
rebuild our model of the universe without
m~them~tics.
If the last sentence sounds like a
challenge, it is onc th:tt was taken up
by American philosopher Hartry Field
(born 1946). 01 the 1980s he proposed that
mathematic~l sto1tcmentS arc all fictiun~l
and th~t science can he creatcd without
mathcm:ttics.
According to his fictional ism dnco-inc,
mathem~[ical statementS arC' uscFuI
structuring devices, but should nOt be
accepted as literally true. And why would we
WHAT W[ R£ WE TAlKING AUOUT1
'make up' mathematics? One an~·wer is that
the structure of the hum~n mind makes it
inevitable. The embodied minds theory is
based in cognitive psychulogy; it was
dtveloped for m~thcmatics by American
cogmtlve linguistic George Lakoff and
psychologist Rafael NllllCZ. Their
argument, expressed in their book Wlm·e
Mllfbt'lllllfics Comes From (2000), is th~t the
Structure of the human brain and the w~}'
our bodies operate in the world has dict:lted
the way we have developt:d mathematics. A~
we can't divorce ourselves from our brains
to examine the universe without our
cognitive process!;!s getting in th!;! way, we
will nOt be able to tell whether mathematics
'Mathematics may or may not be out there
ill the \IVOrld, but there'! no way that we
Kielltifically could possibly tell. '
George l akoff, 2001
has any existence outside hum~n culture.
Plenty of m~thematil'ians disab'Tl:'.e v,ith
Lakoff and NWlez, and with the proponentS
of all the oth!;!r ideas outlined here and they
will no doubt arb'lle the case for many
decades or cenruries to come. The question
of its foundations has little impact on our
d:ty-to-d:ty use of mathematics . We will
carryon playing the lottcry, building
aircraft, looking for life in outcr spac!;! ~nd
insuring against catastrophes without
knowing whethcr lll~them~tics is in all}'
sC'nse 'real' and 'out there', just as the
Egyptians built their pyramids and th~ Incas
counted their llam~s without giving the
matter a second thought.
203
 G LOSSA RY
GLOSSARY
algebraic geometry - geometry using
algebraic eguntions and e"~pressions
algorist - someone who ealcuhtes using the
IIindu-Ar~bic number system to earry out
arithmetic ratlier than using an ah:1CUS
algorithm - a mle for carrying out:1
calculation
an3.I}'tlc geometry - geometry using
coordinates
axiom - a basic h1w which is self evident and
reguires no proof
base - ule basis or 01 L"Qunting system; the bnse
number is ulnt to which numbers are counted
before shifting the pbce value (to tens.
hundreds, etc)
binary - counting system th3l has only t:\vo
digil5, I and 0 (base. 2)
binomial coefficients - the sequence of
coefficients used with vm;:lbles when :I
hinomi:ll expre.~sion is exp3nded
calculus - hranch of mathematics concerned
\\'i th C3lcllhting the sum of infinitesimal
quantitie.~ to approximate the ~rea wIder
~ cun'e or ule rnte of cllange of a curve
chord - a straigh t line joining the ends of :In
arc (a IlOrtion of the eircumference of ~ circle)
coefficient - ~ constl.llt or number hy which
a variable is multiplied in all :llgebraic
expression
commensumble - (or more than one
quantity) able to be measured or mmp3red to
a conic section - a curve produced by ctJIting
a section through a cone
2""
conics - the faIlljl~' of curves produced by
cutting through a cone, or Ule srudy of these
curve.'i
conjecture - all unproven theorem
cosine - the ratio of the side ~djacelll. to all
angle to the hypotenuse in a right-:mgle(!
triangle
cot3.ngent- tlle ratio of Ule side adjacent to
an angle to the side opposite the ~ngle in a
right...angled triangle
decimal fraction - a number in which
frnctiOllal p~rtS ~re expressed :IS ~ decimal
(showing tenths, hundredtlls, thOllSnndtJls
and so on )
differential calculus (differentiation)-
method for calcubting the slope of a <"lJ1ve ~t
a p3rticuhr point
Diophantine equation - :In eq uation in which
all tlle numbers illl"oh-ed are whole numhers
fractal - a curve or OUler figure which
repe~["~ it'i overJll pattern or sbape ill
portions of cOIlSI:lntly reducing sire, so thilt:J
portion of the figure when m:l/,'llified looks
the same as the \vhole fig-me
function - a !1lal:hem3ticai eXl>ression WiUI
one or more variables
hyperbola - n cun'e produced hy $licing
tltrough a cone with a plane \\~ I:h a small e.r
angle nt it.~ :lxis than the side of the CQlle
h yperbolic geometry - geometry Ul3 t deals
with Sh3pe.'i drnwn on curved surfaces
imaginary number - a number which
involves the square root of ~ 1

incommensumble - (of more than one
quantity) not able to be direcuycompared or
measured by tile same standnrd
infini tesimal ~ very sln:J1l guantity, rending'
towani~ zero
integral - tile pronuct of intef:,'l'Jtlon
int egral c:llculus (integratio n) - metllOd
of calculating Ule area under ~ cun'e by
approximating the sum of J large number of
infinitely thin slices of tile ::Irea
irncio nru number- a number which C':lnnOl
be expr~ed :J5 the nUl!) or two wht;lle numbers
limit - the lowest or higheSt \~Jlue to
function will be calculated
log:lrithm - the power [Q which ::I b:lSe figure
(usually 10 or e) must be r:Jised to gille a
specified nu mber
optics - tile study of lenses, lIision and light
parabola - curve produced by slicing
through a cone with a plane par:Jllel to tile
side of tile cone
I)anlle! postulate - Euclid's fiftll posrubte,
\.\'hich stntes the condition which must be
met for lines not to be P:Jf.ll1el (::Ind so by
reversing the postulate gives tile condi tion
for lines to be pnrallel)
perpendicular - ilt righ t :l.IIgles to
perspectille geomeny - tile study of how
three - dimensiollalfigure~ appear and em be
represented in two dimensions
polynomial equation - an equation w hich
in\'olve~ non~zero
powers of a vnrinble (e.g.
x2+4x+ I =0)
GLOSS ARV
quadratic equation - an equarion of tlle
fonnax2+hx+c",O
quinary - bnse 5
ntional number ~ a number which c:m he
e.xpre!!osed :lS:l r:Jtio of t\\'o whole numbers
real number ~ any !)()Sitive or neg-drive m unher
that does not involve the square mot of -I
Riemann geometries - geometries of
surtnces which do not follo\\.\ the standard
rules of tr:lditiollnl pbnar geometry
set' - relnted gl1)up of entities
which a sexagesimal- b:lse 60
sine - tile r:Jtio of tile side opposite an nngJe
to the hYJXItemL~e in a righ r~angled trinngle
spherical trigonometry - the study of
triangles {!rawn on the surface of::l sphere
tangent- tile fJtiO of the side opposite Oln
:Ingle to the side :ldjacent to the nngle in n
right-:lngled tri:lngle
theorem - st:ltement of n rule tllat is not
self-evident but which can be proven by
logical steps
tOf)()logy - the study of geometric properrie~
which are not affected hy ch:mgcs of shape
or sIze
transfinite numbers- !lumbers which relnte
to infinities of different m;\brnitudes; so the
infinite number of whole num bers is smaller
ulnn the infinite number of renl numhers
triangulation - procedure for measuring or
mapping n surt~ce by dividing it into trbngles
and Cllcubting dist:lnce~ and nngles
205
 INDEX

INDEX [".,.'S n ·5 ' .on""y,.Iohn I ~ l

B.. yes'theo",m 17l·4 ' .opemicus, ,I[il:n!.j 90
A B.. yes, Thrn",. 17J· 4 cui"" d"uhling of 77
.I.. cus l809, 57 Il«le n cuhits M · l
Ahhon, ~:'Iwin AI~)On II~ heU cu,\'< 179 cu"-es n ·9
Ad.. m.. John Q ~incy 61 Beltr::lm~ Eugenio I ll, 115 cydo.1 'Ii
Ahmes 1'"1')' '''' 71, 94 Berkeley, Bi.hopGeorge IS6
All",,.;, Leon B.. ni." 105 B"mouU~ D .. niel 171 D
.Igeh ... B"mouU~J.l:nh 54, 157·8, 1 6 ~ ,I'Alemhert,Je:rn LeRon,1 100,171
in Ancient Greece I ll · 5 B"mouU~Jolunn 157·8 De section ih .. conici. (\ \ '.I~.) 16
.rulcoleul .. 159-60 B"mouU~ ~icol,", 171 ,leein,,1 fr.:rctions 17 _JO
in Chino l!l B"mouUi n~ml",rs 4 5 ,1",lucti,-e proof In
"'lLUtion. Il6 ·9, 1l0· 1, IH-5 B!.ck,,\hx In ,Iegrees III
in Europe 110 Bolpi,J'''''' I ll · 14 Demoerit .. 79, 147
.rulgeometty In · l,ll6-4 l Bomhel~, Rof:oel 55, IH, 116 D"",rgues, Gi ... ,,1 IW
.",1 Gero!.m" C'II'(UI>O Ill· l Bo.se, Ah...h"", 109 Des=-tes, Rene 55,97 ·8, 99, IW, 115,
in,\[<sopo"mi. Il l · l Bowl"y,Arthur I ~I 1l7·-1O
in,\[i<1,lIeE2<t Il6 ·9 a",lhu,)" K.y 165 Diff"",,,,,,, Engines 4 1·4
AI.....,h .. (Bomhel~) 116 Bourl .. k~ ~icob. 1~ 9 ,Iiff"",nti:rtion 151 · 1 , IH, 159·60
Alm,¥est (Ptolemy) ~ B... hn",gup" 1 7 · 1 ~ , 19, 87, Il~ Diodes n ·9
.mi",hle n~ml., .. 51 Bn1bmuKYPtuiiMlklntu (B...hn"gup") 17· 18, Dioplunti"" "'lLUtion. 11+ 5
.noly.is 156,157,15809,16) DioplunrusofAle"""lri:r Ill · 5
An.>lytical Engine 4 5
An.>x:ogo"" 76· 7,95
"
Brou"-er, L. E.J. 10l
B runeUesch~ Fi~ppo 104- 5
D ... I:e"'l .... tion 1 ~4
Dummer, Geoffrey 46
Ancient Eg)l't butterflyeff<"" 16S ,Iyrun~c.ystemmeory 160· 1
froction. in 1 ~ , 19 .1. Buli.ni, Ahu .I· \\,.f:o ~~
8""metryin 70).1
n~mhersin 1l, 14_15 , ~:.rth, circumfereoce of So, 87, 95
trigonometry in ~ l , .. lcubting C lock 4 1 e 41 ,5+ 5
Ancient Greece calcubting m""hines 4 1· 7 Edhert,J.l'resper 4<\
.Igeh ... in Ill · 5 calculus 149·65 ~:'I,lington, Sir Arth u r 117
8""metry in 71·81 , .. ~ieri, Bono,-en,"", 148 ,IS1 Ei"'tein, An",n 117
n~ml",rs in 16 ' .. nlOr,Georg I ~~ , 1 ~9, 110· 1 ElemenlS(Eudi,l) ~ 1, 100
trigonometry in ~ l · 6 , .. "Uno, Gerol.mo H, Ill · l, 169 elliptic8""metty II ] · IS
Ancient Rome e>rIog"",hy 105-9 E.",AIC 46, 4 7
8""metry in 6l, ~ 1 · 1 , .."bn, Eugene 51 encrypnrn
n~mhersin 1l,19· 11 CEllS..,.,. 175 on DVD. 59
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Ari.totle 7l numhersin 14 numhers in 10
.rimmetic weights in 64 Eud.1 of Alex:on,lri:r 48 , Sl, ~· I, 100
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in,\[<sopo"mi. l ~ .",1 Pi 9+6 ..,,1 Hin<lu·A ... hic n~ml"'r 'pt em 56· 7
.00 ~ .. ~'e Americons l7 .",1 optics 98-9 ..,,1 ""8"ti,-e n~ml",rs 5809
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Arl'\/ugnu(C",Uno) I ll· J '.<>.>tes, Roger III "",I "",of zero 57
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Assili>n, Seto 19l coml'uters ,\[ulumn",1 Sl
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Fihon..cci ZO, 11, 1~
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