History of Mathematics
What is the name given to the most influential collection of 13 books written by Euclid?
The Elements
An octave in music is very pleasing to the ear. It occurs when two notes are played: one with a given frequency and the other one with a frequency that is _______________ that of the first one.
double / half
The first computer programmer (back then computer science was a branch of mathematics) was a woman. What is her name?
Ada Lovelace
A mathematical statement that hasn't been proven is called a...
conjecture
Which of Euclid's postulates was rejected to develop non-flat geometry?
The fifth one.
Plato's "The Republic" is considered the founding book of Western democracy. In it, he claims that people who don't know ___________________ (an area of math) should never be allowed to lead the State.
Geometry
Bertrand Russell, a famous mathematician and logician, also won a Nobel Prize in...
Literature
Can any natural number be NEITHER prime NOR composite?
Yes, 1 is neither prime nor composite.
Between the years 800 and 1400, mathematics flourished in this Middle Eastern city. Many advances in algebra were made here. This city had a library, translation center, and academy called the House of Wisdom. Which city is it?
Baghdad, Iraq.
The pitch of a note is measured in Hertz. For instance, if a guitar plays a note that is 500 Hz, it means that the string vibrates...
500 times per second
This famous mathematician banned beans among his followers, possibly believing they contained souls.
Pythagoras
In a group of 23 people, what is the chance that at least two people will share the same birthday?
About 50%.
Archimedes realized that a submerged object displaces a volume of water equal to its own volume, allowing him to determine density by comparing mass to displaced volume. This insight let him test whether a crown was pure gold without damaging it. In a fit of jubilation, he leapt straight out of the bath and ran naked down the streets shouting...
Eureka!
Besides mathematicians, who else usually studies formal logic and set theory in university?
Philosophers
Mathematician 1 invented calculus in isolation during a plague in the 1660s but didn't tell anyone. Then, Mathematician 2 published their own development of calculus and Mathematician 1 got very, very salty.
Name either Mathematician 1 or Mathematician 2.
Mathematician 1: Isaac Newton
Mathematician 2: Gottfried Leibniz
The word calculus comes from Latin. What did calculus mean in Latin?
Little stone
In 1931, this logician and mathematician PROVED that mathematics has some true statements that will NEVER be able to be PROVED.
State the name of the mathematician or the name or the theorem.
Kurt Gödel.
The Incompleteness Theorems.
One way to finish a proof is shade a little square square at the end of the proof.
Another way to finish a proof is to write three letters at the end of the proof which mean something very specific.
What are the three letters? What do they mean?
q.e.d
quod erat demonstrandum
"which is what was meant to be proved"
This German mathematician and astrononomer is famous for creating equations for the movements of planets
The word "mathematics" comes from Ancient Greek máthema (μάθημα). In ancient Greece, “mathematics” wasn’t just numbers—it included subjects like geometry, astronomy, and music theory.
What did the word mathematics mean back then?
All of which is learned. All the knowledge. All that is studied.