Pangan, Jolonee G.

GE 106

BS Accountancy

What mathematics is about

Mathematics is possibly one of the most underappreciated sciences. It everywhere in

our lives, mathematics runs our computers, flies our aircraft, and protects our
information. But for such a major part of our lives, very few people can say that they
know how it is done, how the computer programs were made, or even that 21 squared
is 441 without going into mental confusion or reaching for their calculator. Contrary to
popular belief, mathematics has a wide range of useful applications.

I have come to realize a new definition of what math is. Math includes numbers, letters,
and equations, but it is also so much more than that. Math is a way of thinking, a
method of solving problems and explaining arguments, a foundation upon which
modern society is built, a structure that nature is patterned by, and basically, math is
everywhere and it’s already a great part of our everyday lives without us noticing it.

For more than two thousand years, mathematics has been a part of the human life and
search for understanding. Between 400 and 1200 AD, the concept of zero was invented
and accepted as denoting a number because for a long time, humans had no concept of
numbers. The use of symbols for numbers probably developed about five thousand
years ago, when the counters were wrapped in a clay envelope. It was an annoying
work to break open the clay covering every time the accountants wanted to check the
contents, and to make another one when they had finished checking. So the
accountants back then put special marks on the outside of the envelope summarizing
what was inside. Then they realized that they could just make the same marks on any
clay tablets to make their lives easier.

The next extension of the number concept was the invention of negative numbers.
There are many different ways to interpret these more complicated kinds of number. For
example, a negative temperature (in degrees Celsius) is one that is colder than
freezing, and an object with negative velocity is one that is moving backward, So the
same abstract mathematical object may represent more than one aspect of nature.

Fractions are all you need for most commercial transactions, but they're not enough for
mathematics. For example, as the ancient Greeks discovered to their chagrin, the
square root of two is not exactly representable as a fraction. That is, if you multiply any
fraction by itself, you won't get two exactly.

The real numbers are one of the most audacious idealizations made by the human
mind, but they were used happily for centuries before anybody worried about the logic
behind them. That was the introduction of square roots for negative numbers, and it led
to the "imaginary" and "complex" numbers. In current terminology, the whole numbers 0,
1, 2, 3, etc. are known as the natural numbers. If negative whole numbers are included,
we have the integers. Positive and negative fractions are called rational numbers. Real
numbers are more general; complex numbers more general still. So here we have five
number systems, each more inclusive than the previous: natural numbers, integers,
rationals, real numbers, and complex numbers.

However, mathematics is not just about numbers. We've already had a passing
encounter with a different kind of object of mathematical thought, an operation;
examples are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In general, an operation
is something you apply to two (sometimes more) mathematical objects to get a third
object. If you start with a number and form its square root, you get another number. The
term for such an "object" is function. Operations and functions are very similar concepts.
Indeed, on a suitable level of generality there is not much to distinguish them. Both of
them are processes rather than things.

The image of mathematics raised by this description of its basic objects is something
like a tree, rooted in numbers and branching into ever more esoteric data structures as
you proceed from trunk to bough, bough to limb, limb to twig, but this image lacks an
essential ingredient. It fails to describe how mathematical concepts interact.
Mathematics is not just a collection of isolated facts, it is more like a landscape. It has
an inherent geography that its users and creators employ to navigate through what
would otherwise be an impenetrable jungle.

The user of mathematics walks only the well-trod parts of this mathematical territory.
The creator of mathematics explores its unknown mysteries, maps them, and builds
roads through them to make them more easily accessible to everybody else. The
ingredient that knits this landscape together is proof. The proof determines the route
from one fact to another. To professional mathematicians, no statement is considered
valid unless it is proved beyond any possibility of logical error. But there are limits to
what can be proved, and how it can be proved. A great deal of work in philosophy and
the foundations of mathematics has established that you can't prove everything,
because you have to start somewhere; and even when you've decided where to start,
some statements may be neither provable nor disprovable.
Source: Stewart, I. (1995). Nature’s numbers: the unreal reality of mathematics. New
York, NY: BasicBooks.