Definitions of Mathematics

Aristotle defined mathematics as "the science of quantity", and this definition prevailed until the 18th century. Starting in the 19th century, when the study of mathematics increased in rigor and began to address abstract topics such as group theory and projective geometry, which have no clear-cut relation to quantity and measurement, mathematicians and philosophers began to propose a variety of new definitions.Some of these definitions emphasize the deductive character of much of mathematics, some emphasize its abstractness, some emphasize certain topics within mathematics. Today, no consen

sus on the definition of mathematics prevails, even among professionals.There is not even consensus on whether mathematics is an art or a science. A great many professional mathematicians take no interest in a definition of mathematics, or consider it undefinable.Some just say, "Mathematics is what mathematicians do."

Three leading types of definition of mathematics are called logicist, intuitionist, and formalist, each reflecting a different philosophical school of thought. All have severe problems, none has widespread acceptance, and no reconciliation seems possible.

An early definition of mathematics in terms of logic was Benjamin Peirce's "the science that draws necessary conclusions" (1870). In the Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead advanced the philosophical program known as logicism, and attempted to prove that all mathematical concepts, statements, and principles can be defined and proved entirely in terms of symbolic logic. A logicist definition of mathematics is Russell's "All Mathematics is Symbolic Logic" (1903).

Intuitionist definitions, developing from the philosophy of mathematician L.E.J. Brouwer, identify mathematics with certain mental phenomena. An example of an intuitionist definition is "Mathematics is the mental activity which consists in carrying out constructs one after the other." A peculiarity of intuitionism is that it rejects some mathematical ideas considered valid according to other definitions. In particular, while other philosophies of mathematics allow objects that can be proved to exist even though they cannot be constructed, intuitionism allows only mathematical objects that one can actually construct.

Formalist definitions identify mathematics with its symbols and the rules for operating on them. Haskell Curry defined mathematics simply as "the science of formal systems". A formal system is a set of symbols, or tokens, and some rules telling how the tokens may be combined into formulas. In formal systems, the word axiom has a special meaning, different from the ordinary meaning of "a self-evident truth". In formal systems, an axiom is a combination of tokens that is included in a given formal system without needing to be derived using the rules of the system.

REFERENCE FROM WIKIPEDIA

History of Mathematics

The history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The first abstraction, which is shared by many animals,was probably that of numbers: the realization that a collection of two apples and a collection of two oranges (for example) have something in common, namely quantity of their members.

Greek mathematician Pythagoras, commonly credited with discovering the Pythagorean theorem

Mayan numerals

As evidenced by tallies found on bone, in addition to recognizing how to count physical objects, prehistoric peoples may have also recognized how to count abstract quantities, like time – days, seasons, years.

Evidence for more complex mathematics does not appear until around 3000 BC, when the Babylonians and Egyptians began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for taxation and other financial calculations, for building and construction, and for astronomy. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns and the recording of time.

In Babylonian mathematics, elementary arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have been many and diverse, with the first known written numerals created by Egyptians in Middle Kingdom texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.

Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a systematic study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics.

Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780 – c. 850), the inventor of algebra.

During the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, mathematics saw many important innovations building on Greek mathematics: most of them include the contributions from Persian mathematicians such as Al-Khwarismi, Omar Khayyam and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī.

Mathematics has since been greatly extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today. According to Mikhail B. Sevryuk, in the January 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, "The number of papers and books included in the Mathematical Reviews database since 1940 (the first year of operation of MR) is now more than 1.9 million, and more than 75 thousand items are added to the database each year. The overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs."

Etymology

The word mathematics comes from Ancient Greek μάθημα (máthēma), meaning "that which is learnt","what one gets to know", hence also "study" and "science". The word for "mathematics" came to have the narrower and more technical meaning "mathematical study" even in Classical times.Its adjective is μαθηματικός (mathēmatikós), meaning "related to learning" or "studious", which likewise further came to mean "mathematical". In particular, μαθηματικὴ τέχνη (mathēmatikḗ tékhnē), Latin: ars mathematica, meant "the mathematical art".

Similarly, one of the two main schools of thought in Pythagoreanism was known as the mathēmatikoi (μαθηματικοί)—which at the time meant "teachers" rather than "mathematicians" in the modern sense.

In Latin, and in English until around 1700, the term mathematics more commonly meant "astrology" (or sometimes "astronomy") rather than "mathematics"; the meaning gradually changed to its present one from about 1500 to 1800. This has resulted in several mistranslations. For example, Saint Augustine's warning that Christians should beware of mathematici, meaning astrologers, is sometimes mistranslated as a condemnation of mathematicians.

The apparent plural form in English, like the French plural form les mathématiques (and the less commonly used singular derivative la mathématique), goes back to the Latin neuter plural mathematica (Cicero), based on the Greek plural τα μαθηματικά (ta mathēmatiká), used by Aristotle (384–322 BC), and meaning roughly "all things mathematical"; although it is plausible that English borrowed only the adjective mathematic(al) and formed the noun mathematics anew, after the pattern of physics and metaphysics, which were inherited from Greek.In English, the noun mathematics takes a singular verb. It is often shortened to maths or, in English-speaking North America, math.

REFERENCE FROM WIKIPEDIA

Mathematics

Mathematics (from Greek μάθημα máthēma, "knowledge, study, learning") is the study of such topics as quantity,structure,space,and change.There are many views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope and definition of mathematics.

Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof. When mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry.

Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Peano(1858–1932), David Hilbert (1862–1943), and others on axiomatic systems in the late 19th century, it has become customary to view mathematical research as establishing truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions. Mathematics developed at a relatively slow pace until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacting with new scientific discoveries led to a rapid increase in the rate of mathematical discovery that has continued to the present day.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) said, "The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth." Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences". Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) called mathematics "the science that draws necessary conclusions". David Hilbert said of mathematics: "We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. Rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise." Albert Einstein (1879–1955) stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered.

REFERENCE FROM WIKIPEDIA

Mensuration

Mensuration may refer to:

• Measurement
• Theory of measurement
  • Mensuration (mathematics), a branch of mathematics that deals with measurement of various parameters of geometric figures and many more
  • Forest mensuration, a branch of forestry that deals with measurements of forest stand
• Mensural notation in music
• Mensuration canon, a musical composition wherein the main melody is accompanied by one or more imitations of that melody in other voices 

MEASUREMENT:

Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events.^[1][2] The scope and application of a measurement is dependent on the context and discipline. In the natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of the International vocabulary of metrology published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.^[2] However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the social and behavioral sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales.^[1][3]

Measurement is a cornerstone of trade, science, technology, and quantitative research in many disciplines. Historically, many measurement systems existed for the varied fields of human existence to facilitate comparisons in these fields. Often these were achieved by local agreements between trading partners or collaborators. Since the 18th century, developments progressed towards unifying, widely accepted standards that resulted in the modern International System of Units (SI). This system reduces all physical measurements to a mathematical combination of seven base units. The science of measurement is pursued in the field of metrology.

REFERENCE FROM WIKIPEDIA

Trigonometry table

Trigonomety is the a branch of mathematics, which involves the study of realtionship involving the length and angles of a traingle. It is generally associated with a right-angled triangle, where one of the angle is always 90 degrees.

It has wide number of application in other fields of mathematics. Well, the use of trigonometry is used to map with the help of triangle. Interestingly, it is said that Ancient Greeks were used to trigonometry to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

All these calculations can be easily figured out using the tables of trigonometric functions. The trigonometric table is useful in the number of areas. Trigonometry Table is essential for navigation, science, and engineering. The trigonometric table was effectively used in the pre-digital era, even before the existence of pocket calculators. Further, the trigonometric table led to the development of the first mechanical computing devices.

The Trigonometrical ratios table helps to find the values of trigonometric standard angles such as 0°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 90°. The values of trigonometrical ratios of standard angles are very important to solve the trigonometrical problems. Therefore, it is necessary to remember the value of the trigonometrical ratios of these standard angles. Another important application of trigonometric tables is for Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms.

The trigonometric table consists of trigonometric ratios – sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant, secant, cotangent. These ratios can be written in short as sin, cos, tan, cosec, sec and cot.

How To Remember Trigonometry Table In Easy Way?

Remembering the trigonometry table will help in many ways, and it is easy to remember the table. If you know the trigonometry formulas than remembering the trigonometry table is very easy. The Trigonometry ratio table id depended upon the trigonometry formulas in the similar way all the functions of trigonometry are depended on each aspect and interlinked with each other. Below are the few steps to memorize the trigonometry table.

Before beginning try to remember these values, recall and remember below trigonometry formulas.

$\sin x=\cos ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\cos x=\sin ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\tan x=\cot ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\cot x=\tan ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\sec x=\cot ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\cot x=\sec ({90}^{\circ }-x)$
$\frac{1}{\sin x}=\frac{1}{\cos x}=$ $\sin x$
$\frac{1}{\cos x}=$ $\sec x$
$\frac{1}{\sec x}=$ $\cos x$
$\frac{1}{\tan x}=$ $\cot x$
$\frac{1}{\cot x}=$ $\tan x$