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Mathematical Chronology

www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk

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Re: Mathematical Chronology

#51

Post by williamblake »

kevinwang wrote: post #43
williamblake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well the linked page says: It’s also not surprising that they could create a flat surface or angles that are exactly-ish 90 degrees. The Egyptians boast some of the earliest known texts on geometry, like the Rhind Papyrus (from around 1650 BCE) and the Moscow papyrus (from about 1850 BCE). The latter papyrus indicates that the Egyptians could approximate pi (as 3.16049) and find the volume of a truncated pyramid. It…

I was referring to the precision of the boxes, not Brien Forester's quote about it, and more specifically the surface that is mirror polished to several ten-thousandths of an inch as estimated with a precision straight edge and toolmaker's square by someone who was a precision machinist, engineer, "master craftsman" (member of a professional guild), and a member of Mensa. These tools are so precise that if you drop them on the ground, handle them the wrong way or they end up in untrusted hands, they have to be re-calibrated and verified.

I apologize if this is an order of magnitude beyond most peoples' understanding and experience. It's probably not your occupation, so please don't take it personally. As an example of what this degree of precision is, consider a thin hair which is about four thousandths of an inch in diameter. If you slice that diameter up ten times, you will then have something that is as small as or at least reasonably approaching this measurement.

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#52

Post by williamblake »

posterboy wrote: post #48
kevinwang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the linked page says: It’s also not surprising that they could create a flat surface or angles that are exactly-ish 90 degrees. The Egyptians boast some of the earliest known texts on geometry, like the Rhind Papyrus (from around 1650 BCE) and the Moscow papyrus (from about 1850 BCE). The latter papyrus indicates that the Egyptians could approximate pi (as 3.16049) and find the volume of a truncated pyramid. It…

If you look at marble statues, a square box is hardly amazing in comparison. "a few ten-thousandths of an inch" - close to micro meter precision - sounds almost like exaggeration, but some type of stone might just split in a very planar way.

Yes, there are some amazing marble statues. Have you seen the one where there is a fishing net cut from marble? Or the twins from Russia - two identical statues except for some obvious clumps of hair of hair, as if an image was taken at different times, in the breeze, and an artist or machine reproduced the statue from the image. I am assuming that most marble statues are at least an order of magnitude less precise than the granite box. Granite, by the way, is composed of different materials, such as, for example, feldspar and quartz. It doesn't break along a plane. Yes, a micrometer is .0001". Calipers, on the other hand, often only measure to .001" and would not be able to measure anything this precise.

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#53

Post by kevinwang »

williamblake wrote: post #51
kevinwang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the linked page says: It’s also not surprising that they could create a flat surface or angles that are exactly-ish 90 degrees. The Egyptians boast some of the earliest known texts on geometry, like the Rhind Papyrus (from around 1650 BCE) and the Moscow papyrus (from about 1850 BCE). The latter papyrus indicates that the Egyptians could approximate pi (as 3.16049) and find the volume of a truncated pyramid. It…

I was referring to the precision of the boxes, not Brien Forester's quote about it, and more specifically the surface that is mirror polished to several ten-thousandths of an inch as estimated with a precision straight edge and toolmaker's square by someone who was a precision machinist, engineer, "master craftsman" (member of a professional guild), and a member of Mensa. These tools are so precise that if you drop t…

I see. Very interesting if true.

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#54

Post by perilunar »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #20

Please 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've played with the vis.js timelines a bit and quite like them: http://visjs.org/timeline_examples.html

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#55

Post by fjdlwlv »

drio wrote: post #44

This is great. Thank you for sharing. These days I am working on trying to understand the Fourier transform (1807). It is great fun. I finally understand the equation and how it works. Pure beauty. Now I am in the process to use it in practice. I am planning to write about it and perhaps write some visualizations to help others understand. This post made me think about a crazy idea I had. I wanted to write periodic p…

https://www.quantamagazine.org/ does what you describe

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#56

Post by fjdlwlv »

badminton1 wrote: post #19

It would be good to include the setbacks caused by religious intervention. You can find some of it here in this other timeline: http://superstringtheory.com/history/history1.html e.g: Hypatia, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus... and many more.

Galileo's wasn't held back by religious intervention against science.

Even debates about heliocentrism weren't interfering with math.

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#57

Post by pdm55 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #23
laichzeit0 wrote: post #4

I'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?

some insights https://www.webofstories.com/story/search?q=math&max=20&p=1&...

Re: Mathematical Chronology

#58

Post by pdm55 »

drio wrote: post #44

This is great. Thank you for sharing. These days I am working on trying to understand the Fourier transform (1807). It is great fun. I finally understand the equation and how it works. Pure beauty. Now I am in the process to use it in practice. I am planning to write about it and perhaps write some visualizations to help others understand. This post made me think about a crazy idea I had. I wanted to write periodic p…

An interesting book, written by an interesting group, is "Who is Fourier". They seem to be mainly undergraduates in Japan who learn and teach each other new languages. They took on a similar task to explain Fourier Transforms to each other. Their motivation was to understand the mathematics of languages.
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