Tuesday, September 24, 2013

4. The History of Mathematics

Sometimes I feel learning mathematics will be incomplete without studying its own history. Mathematics has started since 5000 years ago from the beginning of learning in counting number where the number systems and symbols were created to indicate the number of objects. 

 

Mathematics has developed from the civilizations in Egypt (1650 b.c) and our knowledge of mathematics from Egypt was believed to comes from Rhind Papyrus and Moscow Papyrus. This is also an era where the beginning of problems like rational numbers, approximating the area of circle, and finding the quadratic equations.

Then mathematics started to advance in other civilizations as well and most mathematicians continuously sacrificed their time to contribute some knowledge by solving many hard and difficult problems. Famous problems in mathematics involve squaring the circle, measurement of Earth, estimating the value of pi, and last but not least Fibonacci and Pythagorean problem.

Mathematics has been developed so far today because our dedicated mathematicians like Euclid, Diophantus, Fibonacci, Newton, Bernoulli, Laplace Fermat, Euler, Gauss and many more committed their life in mathematics.
All these were honored in their generations, and
were the glory of their names.
There be of them, that have left a name behind
them, that their praises might be reported.
And some there be, which have no memorial; who
are perished, as though they had never been born; and
their children after them.
ECCESIASTICUS 44:7-9 
And me myself hope to contribute some knowledge in mathematics one day too. 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

3. Importance of Good Habits

My dad bought me this book when I was still in primary school. He forced advised me to practice my English by writing at least one essay for everyday. I remember he locked me inside the room with him one day and asked me to start from the first page. That's my first day and my last day (he gave up because I couldn't start at all). That was also my first day fear of English. Well, apparently I didn't touch that book much after that day.


I was reading the book and came across an article about the importance of good habits. Here what it says:
Good habits are important for good living. No one can live a good and happy life, if he does not have good habits.
Good habits mean that we should not do things that are harmful to us and to others. Whatever we do must be good for us and for others.
Among the good habits are, going to bed early and waking up early, keeping ourselves clean, eating good food, avoiding food and drinks that are harmful to us, keeping ourselves fit through exercise, avoiding smoking, and so on.
Other good habits include, reading good books, watching good television programmes, speaking politely, avoiding fights and quarrels, helping others and understanding the problems of people who are less fortunate than we are.
I did most of it except the exercise part ( I hate exercise!) and going to bed early (I'm an owl! so it doesn't count).That is a simple but good article about the importance of having good habits. Maybe I can make it as my new resolution for next year.

p/s: About reading good books, this is indeed a good book and I'm read a lot these days. Hope I will continue to do so.