Fantastic, I wish I had read this back in elementary / high school.
Will review with the kids!
Not having this context in mathematics teaching is criminal.
Mathematical Chronology
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#22Please anyone, what is best timeline metaphor you know of? This is great stuff, but I immediately want to interactively browse through the information. For different parts be able to dive deeper, see high level views, different categories, taxonomies, links to related topics. Not trying to reinvent Wikipedia or hypermedia. But specifically to timelines with a lot of density, it seems there ought to be some nice user…
I like the UI for timelines in Chrome Developer Tools or sound waveform editing programs, like Adobe Audition.
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#23I'm not a mathematician, but I've always been fascinated by two specific periods in the history of mathematics: Around 1750-1850 where you have Gauss, Fourier, Poisson, Laplace, Navier, Cauchy, Lagrange, Euler. That's just... insane. And then the mathematics that happened around ~1940.. Kolmogorov, Fisher, Poincaré, Gödel, Von Neumann, Church, Turing... Just crazy.
I'd love to be able to watch a simple video interview with these guys. Something like...Dr. Gödel, could we take just a few of your notable insights and have you walk us through how the fuck you managed to come up with them?
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#24There is a network of artificial tunnels in Egypt called the Serapeum of Saqqara. It contains at least 24 large boxes made from single pieces of solid granite, allegedly moved there from a very interesting granite quarry several hundred miles away, then hollowed out to a mirror finish and a precision of a few ten-thousandths of an inch as tested by a precision machinist with a precision toolmaker's square who is also…
The qualities of the Saqqara boxes are entirely consistent with what we know about the mathematical and engineering sophistication of ancient Egyptians. There is nothing well-verified "not in the books" that upends the "conventional timeline". The only people claiming otherwise are Discovery Channel nutcase types who want you to believe, without real evidence, often with fake evidence, and always with fatuous reasoni…
I'm sorry that I have given you the impression that I or others like myself who discuss these questions believe in ancient aliens. I realize that this is a topic of confusion for many "debunkers". I don't accept belief as a valuable tool the process of discovering the truth, nor do I deem it necessary in the practice of science. Unbiased observation, free from belief is important.
And denotative language seems to be more effective than connotative language, at least as far as these kings of arguments are concerned. Logical argument is better than the disparagement of persons and groups when arguing and making a point. And staying on topic is also a good thing.
There is a growing discussion regarding belief systems within academia and various conventional sciences such as archeology. This seems to be a problem and if it is not cleaned up fairly quickly and replaced with something more logical, evidence-based, reality-accepting and legitimately scientific, the term "pseudoscience" will likely be used against those coming from the conventional side of these topics.
I don't see anything relevant from your link that explains the precision of the boxes I mentioned above. What do you know about ancient Egyptian mathematics and engineering that relates to this subject? I have read the entire page you linked to, so forgive me in advance for missing it.
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#25Too bad it ends at 2000, though I understand that 17 years ago may still be too soon to know what should count as history. Does anybody have a suggestion of what they think will eventually be included in such a timeline covering the last 20 years if it were made in 2100?
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#26Too bad it ends at 2000, though I understand that 17 years ago may still be too soon to know what should count as history. Does anybody have a suggestion of what they think will eventually be included in such a timeline covering the last 20 years if it were made in 2100?
I'm surprised Gromov and Thurston's contributions to geometry in the 70s-00s aren't emphasized more. Some things I think should be on there from my admittedly limited point of view:
- 1982/87: Yao and then later Goldreich-Micali-Wigderson prove the "fundamental theorem of cryptography", which essentially states that any computational functionality can be achieved "efficiently" and securely. I.e., given k parties with one input each and any function F of k inputs and k outputs, the parties can communicate so that each learns their output of the function on all the inputs, and nothing else.
- 2003: Perelman's proof of the geometrization conjecture.
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#27Too bad it ends at 2000, though I understand that 17 years ago may still be too soon to know what should count as history. Does anybody have a suggestion of what they think will eventually be included in such a timeline covering the last 20 years if it were made in 2100?
- 2013: Yitang Zhang's work on the gap between prime numbers.
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#28There is a network of artificial tunnels in Egypt called the Serapeum of Saqqara. It contains at least 24 large boxes made from single pieces of solid granite, allegedly moved there from a very interesting granite quarry several hundred miles away, then hollowed out to a mirror finish and a precision of a few ten-thousandths of an inch as tested by a precision machinist with a precision toolmaker's square who is also…
That mathematician is Fomenko. An entertaining read though history and linguistics experts just laugh at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Fomenko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko)
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#29There is a network of artificial tunnels in Egypt called the Serapeum of Saqqara. It contains at least 24 large boxes made from single pieces of solid granite, allegedly moved there from a very interesting granite quarry several hundred miles away, then hollowed out to a mirror finish and a precision of a few ten-thousandths of an inch as tested by a precision machinist with a precision toolmaker's square who is also…
The achievements of past cultures are often so impressive. I have seen ancient Egyptian artifacts (King Tut's exhibit) and on the same day got to see some ancient Mayan and very old Japanese Art. All of it interesting and quite amazing (especially the intricacy and exactness of the admittedly much more recent Japanese Art).
To keep these ancient achievements in perspective though I recall working at Texas Instruments in the 70's (doing real-time process control programming). One of my friends there related to me his experience in giving a job interview, years earlier, to a young machinist, classically trained in Germany. The job seeker brought his final project as a sample of his work. A highly polished, precisely square, solid cube of polished steel, or so it appeared to my friend. It had all been made with hand tools, no fancy milling or grinding machines.
My friend marveled at it, but then the young man said "watch this" and proceeded to slide the upper half of the solid cube on a dovetailed channel that connected the upper half of the cube to the lower half. My friend, a mechanical engineer, said he had never seen anything like it; it was so carefully made that the channel was invisible to him when the cube was squared. The main shaping tool used in the construction of this cube was simply a file.
Re: Mathematical Chronology
#30Here you have the chronology in an infographic made with an automatic tool that I'm working on:
http://history.takethejuice.com/output/MTQ5Njk0MDc1NC1NYXRoZ...