History of Mathematics - Essay Example

With time there was the development of mathematical ideas that are in use today. The Greeks, the Chinese and Western people contributed greatly to the development of mathematical ideas that are in use today. Ideas such as connections, argumentation, number sense and computation, algebra, probability were all great ideas that are used today. These developments are as important as even the ten numerals that are used termed as the counting numbers, or the idea of considering “zero” an actual number.

However, these concepts that were considered difficult in the previous days are not simple and this has been due to the fact that in recent days the way in which mathematics is taught makes the concepts easier2. These concepts and ideas were discovered through using the knowledge of the previous mathematicians that were often inherited from the earlier mathematicians who lived before them. In addition, the concepts were discovered through the use of the mathematical and numerical systems, and through the activities that their culture encouraged them to get involved in.

While the present day students learn mathematics through books and teachers, theirs was the tedious way often trial and error played a part. The base ten systems in use today that had place values was the representation of the numerals that ranged from 0 to 9 that in most cases were used in combination to express real numbers. The early cultures that saw the rise of these mathematical ideas never used this system while in other countries there were different ways of writing the numbers. Some cultures allowed the use of “tallying” system when counting the numbers.

The tallying included writing four vertical digits that were crossed by a diagonal line to show a group of five scores3. Other cultures had their own systems. For example the Roman numbers used today were used by the Romans. They used consecutive numbers that implied