[astonecipher]

I thought math had it origins in either Egypt or Greece?

[jon.kiparsky]

Or Hindi, if you're using zeros

[astonecipher]

Or America if your lost and confused!

[jon.kiparsky]

astonecipher, on 07 September 2014 - 09:37 PM, said:

I thought math had it origins in either Egypt or Greece?

There's a fair bit of argument over whether math is "invented" or "discovered" - so it might be safer to say that math just is.

[macosxnerd101]

Math must think as well! Somebody call Turing and Godel.

[astonecipher]

I'm as far from mathematician as you can get, but I go with invented. People had to agree on the rules for it to be universally accepted. If they hadn't 1+8 could have equaled 2. It's all in acceptance. Just like a table is called a table because everyone agrees that it is.

[no2pencil]

astonecipher, on 05 September 2014 - 03:28 PM, said:

I have to say, I love my job. I am sitting in my office drinking a beer that was paid for by my Boss. In the US that is a bit irregular!

This place I worked at years ago, one of the three owners was the IT Director. When we would come in after hours for maintenance he had a 'beer & tacos' after midnight policy. It was sort of funny, loved them tacos!

[macosxnerd101]

Quote

I'm as far from mathematician as you can get, but I go with invented.

Of course, with the natural numbers, we are cavefolk assigning grunts to the number of bison in the herd. Subtraction comes pretty easily with the idea of exchange. And so we go from the naturals to the integers. The rational numbers come easily, as the ratio of two coprime integers (a and c are coprime if gcd(a, c) = 1). It takes quite a bit more work to get the reals (look up Dedekind Cuts or the Completeness Axiom, the latter of which deals with limits of Cauchy sequences). Multiplication takes a bit of work, but not much. We are again assigning grunts to the number of units of x elements. A bit of work goes into formalizing division. In this case, we want factor groups and quotient rings.

Some of this math comes up naturally- the Fibonacci spiral, the quadratic equation (think gravity).

Certain areas you can certainly say were invented (such as group theory), but many were discovered. We really can get quite far in about an hour starting with assigning grunts to the number bison in the herd. Whether we call this grunt "eight" or "uh uh ah oh ooooh", the number of bison present does not change based on our labeling.

[jon.kiparsky]

astonecipher, on 07 September 2014 - 09:51 PM, said:

I'm as far from mathematician as you can get, but I go with invented. People had to agree on the rules for it to be universally accepted. If they hadn't 1+8 could have equaled 2. It's all in acceptance. Just like a table is called a table because everyone agrees that it is.

If you define "1" to mean "1/3" and "8" to mean "2/3", sure. But I don't mean that the name "one" is the only possible name for "successor of zero". I mean there's no possible math, I think, where 1 + 8 could equal 2, assuming that one is "successor of zero" and eight is "successor of seven" (and seven is defined similarly, down to zero - the basic Peano definitions)

Integer arithmetic, I think, works the same in all universes.

Similarly, the basic ideas of sets are the same in all worlds - I mean, the idea of a collection with no repeated elements, and the idea of union and intersection hardly seem like things you'd call "inventions". On the other hand, the different axiom sets that are used to get around Russell's paradox could legitimately be said to be invented. There are many possible ways to make sets come together in a consistent way - probably infinite, though I couldn't prove it off the top of my head - and it's really a matter of selecting one that works for your purpose. So I guess it's kind of like the difference between "inventing" the wheel and inventing a particular configuration of hub, spokes, and rim that has a particular set of advantages.

[depricated]

Damn, I was just making a joke about Asian students being good at math...

True story: my old roommate is of Korean descent. I met him in school. We were leaving our Calc 2 class when this guy just hands his binder to my friend. He says, "here you can do my homework. I just made your weekend right?" We were both at a loss for words. Still not the most racist thing I've seen happen to him though. That happened at a Chinese restaurant.

As far as math goes, 8-1 would equal 7 regardless of what we call it. Thinking we invented math is just anthropocentric hubris. All we did was identify - discover, not invent - patterns in quantitative systems. We just use prejudicial language to describe it. It's the same as saying someone invented the proxy pattern. No, it's a pattern of relationships between entities that was discovered.

We aren't special. The universe doesn't bend to our will. Patterns don't exist simply because we think they're useful - rather, we evolved in such a way that we recognize and capitalize upon the patterns we discover.

It's similar to saying that Saurapods evolved long necks in order to reach the tops of trees. Again, bad prejudicial language which almost accurately conveys an idea, but is too simplified and makes false implications. Math wasn't invented - only the language and symbols we use to describe it.

[jon.kiparsky]

depricated, on 07 September 2014 - 10:24 PM, said:

We aren't special.

Speak for yourself, bucko.

My mother said I was special. Are you saying my mother's a liar?

[depricated]

Special ed, maybe.

[macosxnerd101]

Jon had his own private short bus take him to school each morning.

[jon.kiparsky]

depricated, on 07 September 2014 - 10:36 PM, said:

Special ed, maybe.

No, that's my brother. Eddy's special too.

macosxnerd101, on 07 September 2014 - 10:37 PM, said:

Jon had his own private short bus take him to school each morning.

That's what the guy said - it was my own private bus. And he even had candy!

[DarenR]

how i feel todaY