MATH 1)NUMBER SYSTEMS 2)PYTHAGOREAN BROTHERHOOD 3)BOOK 'HOW TO SOLVE IT' 4) JOHN NAPIER - Essay Example

Napier was one of the first, if not the first, to use the decimal point in expressing decimal fractions in a systematic way and according to the modern system of decimal notation[1]. The first tables of logarithms were published independently by the Scottish mathematician John Napier in 1614 and the Swiss mathematician Justus Byrgius in 1620. The first table of common logarithms was compiled by the English mathematician Henry Briggs [1]. Henry Briggs (1561-1630) was born at Warley Wood, near Halifax at Yorkshire and educated at St.

John's College, in Cambridge. He is notable for changing Napier's logarithms into common/Brigessian Logarithms [2]. In the year 1616, Henry Brigss visited John Napier in his home in Edinburgh to discuss the suggested change to Napier's work [2]. The next year, Henry again visited John regarding the same matter. He proposed the alteration of the scale of logarithms from the hyperbolic 1 / e from which John Napier had given to that which unity is assumed as the logarithm of the ratio of 10 to 1 [2].

During their conversation, the alteration proposed by Briggs was agreed upon by Napier and published the first chiliad of his logarithms during his second visit to Edinburgh in 1617. In 1624 Henry Briggs gave a numerical approximation to the base 10 logarithm. The Pythagorean Brotherhood is one of Greece's ancient societies. . settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in southern Italy, where he founded a movement with religious, political, and philosophical aims, known as Pythagoreanism.. There he founded the famous Pythagorean school in the south of Italy, which in addition to being an academy for the study of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science, developed into a closely knit brotherhood with secret rites and observances (Eves, 54).

The Pythagoreans adhered to certain mysteries, observed bedience and silence, abstinence from food, simplicity in dress and possessions. The Pythagoreans believed in immortality and in the transmigration of souls. The brotherhood became so great that the democratic forces of the south of Italy destroyed the school buildings and caused the society to disperse (Eves, 55). According to Eves, the Pythagorean philosophy rested on the assumption that whole number is the cause of the various qualities of matter, which led to the exhaltation and study of number properties and arithmetic along with geometry, music and spherics constituted the fundamental liberal arts of the Pythagorean program of study(Eves, 55).

The brotherhood dispersed after Pythagoras was said to have died through murder. Although scattered in different places, not only in Italy, the brotherhood continued to exist for at least two (2) more centuries. For the reason that Pythagoras' teaching was entirely oral, and also because of the custom of the brotherhood to refer all discoveries back to the revered founder, it is now difficult to know which mathematical findings should be credited to Pythagoras himself, and which to other members of the society (Eves, 55).

How to Solve It How to Solve It is a book in small volume describing the methods in problem solving [3]. George Plya was