Timeline for How far back in time would Maths be understandable to a modern mathematician?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 11, 2016 at 5:48 | comment | added | slebetman | @Mark: Minor correction. The Babylonians did their arithmetic in base 60. Math per se doesn't care what base you're in. Pi is still Pi in any base. | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 21:22 | comment | added | Mark | Understandable, maybe, but with great difficulty. The Babylonians did their math in base 60, while the Egyptians didn't have fractions as we know them -- instead, they used sums of reciprocals (eg. what we'd write as "4/5" would be written as "1/4 + 1/2 + 1/20"). | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 15:08 | comment | added | Jon Story | And if the concept exists, it's easy enough for you to just say "Look, let's put two lines like this + to say we're adding them together, and one line like this - to say we're subtracting them". "Oh" says the Caveman, "That's a neat idea". | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 12:09 | comment | added | King of Snakes | @Guran : Your right, then have a upvote :) | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 11:40 | comment | added | Ordous | @KingofSnakes The symbol may have not existed, but then again - books weren't as commonplace either, so there wouldn't even be a place where you can note the absence. | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 11:34 | comment | added | Guran | Nah... The symbols might not have existed, but the concept of addition certainly did. "Og have one rock. Og get another rock. Og now have two rocks." So it's just really a matter of communication/translation. Since "magic" handles translation it's just a matter of how much magic to apply. | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 11:09 | comment | added | King of Snakes | Thats not really true. The symbols for addition and subtraction did not exist at one point. That makes it really hard to understand maths for a modern mathematician. | |
| Aug 10, 2016 at 11:03 | history | answered | Guran | CC BY-SA 3.0 |