QQC 8

Much Ado About Numbers: Chapter 0


“Numbers are words (and symbols) that we use to describe patterns. It is essential for all creatures on our planet to perceive patterns. Even the simplest organism needs to be able to distinguish between things that may kill it and things that it needs to eat.”

If you look at it this way, the organisms with the most ability to recognize patterns survive. In this way every generation gets smarter. So, could you say that simple organisms evolve intelligence?

“We are the only creatures on Earth to make use of language, so its not terribly surprising that we are the only ones to “speak numbers.””

What defines a language? How do we know we are the only ones that speak numbers? In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the dolphins are the second most intelligent beings and know far before humans of the destruction of the earth. How do we test if another species knows numbers if they don’t see “numbers” as a representation of a number of objects?

“Clues of the origins of the Roman numerals are also visible in their language. In Latin, rationem putare means “to count.” The word ratio meant (as it does today) “a relationship between things” and the word putare meant “to cut, or prune a tree.” So when the Romans talked about counting, the spoke words that effectively meant, “use your eyes to observe relationships between things and make cuts in wood.”

“Nothing was invented around 1,800 years ago in India.” 

Where did the concept of zero come from mentally? Aside from a number to keep other numbers in place, how do you quantify nothing?

“It took a while, but eventually it was realized that zero doesn’t always obey the rules that other numbers obey.”

Zero be breakin’ rules. But is it ethical? XD

“Over a thousand years after Brahmagupta had written his work, a French mathematician named Guillaume de I’Hopital received his credit for this idea of shrinking series to zero over zero and it is known today as I’Hopital’s Rule.”

Mathematics is such a violent and vindictive hobby. Yeesh.