NOTRE DAME – SIENA COLLEGE OF POLOMOLOK

Polomolok, South Cotabato

School year 2020-2021

LEARNING MODULE IN MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD (GE 4)

Module no. 5 Inclusive week September 14-18, 2020
Module Overview References/Research Links
History of Mathematics Essential Mathematics for the Modern World
Rizaldi C. Nocon and Ederlina G. Nocon
(page 38-46)
Learning Outcomes
 Explain how mathematics quantify and compare situations, events and phenomena.
 Determine the mathematical attributes of objects or processes and how are they measured or calculated?
Module Content

What is mathematics? Mathematics has no general accepted definition. It came from the Greek word
máthēma, which means “knowledge/study/learning.” It is also described as the abstract study of topics
encompassing quantity, structure, space, change, and other properties.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had this to say about mathematics: “The universe cannot be read until we
have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in
mathematics language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which
means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a
dark labyrinth.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) referred to mathematics as “the Queen of the Sciences.” In fact,
Benjamin Pierce (1809-1880) called mathematics “the science that draws necessary conclusions.”
According to David Hilbert: “We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not
like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. Rather, it is a conceptual system
possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise.”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) stated that “as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science,
engineering, medicine, and the social sciences.

The Ancient World

How come mathematics is what it is today? The mathematics applied today has its roots in ancient Egypt
and Babylonia, which grew rapidly in Greece. This ancient Greek mathematics, along with some Hindu
mathematics, was translated into Arabic, then Latin, making it the mathematics of Western Europe. After
some time, it became the mathematics of the world.
Other cultures have developed some form of mathematics as well but did not have much influence on
current international mathematics.
Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics evolved from counting, measurement,
and calculation to the systematic study of objects, relationships, and systems.
Today’s mathematics has two broad divisions: applied and pure. Applied mathematics provides the tools
needed to shape the world. Pure math, where mathematicians develop theorems and seek proofs, is the
esoteric part of the discipline.
Applied math progressed because of necessity. The Egyptians devised a mathematical system designed to
meet their needs for accurate surveying. Their methods were functional and approximate, using brute force
and trial and error to find solutions. As their great monuments attest, this worked for them.
On the other hand, the Babylonians began to look at the theoretical side of mathematics, studying
relationships between numbers and patterns. All of these were passed on the Greeks, who also benefited
from the Egyptians. The Greeks were the first to concentrate on pure mathematics. They believed that all
mathematical knowledge could be derived from reasoning. It was with them that the axiomatic method,
where abstraction and proof are key, flourished. In the axiomatic method, a number of commonly accepted
assumptions called axioms or postulates are made. From these, other results, in the form of lemmas,
theorems, and corollaries, are proved using logical and mathematical reasoning.
The Romans, however, took mathematics back to the applied realm, using it to build bridges, temples,
and aqueducts.
The Middle Ages
During this period, mathematics fell into a decline that lasted for about 1,000 years, except in China,
India, and the Arab world where mathematics continued to thrive. One of the few bright spots in European
mathematics during this period was the work of Fibonacci who helped open Europe to the Arabic
mathematical methods. At this point, an era in mathematics came to an end and the modern world was born.

The Modern Era

16th Century
Significant developments in Europe began again in the 16th century with the progress in algebra,
specifically with the solution of cubic and quartic equations. This had a major psychological effect on the
enthusiasm for mathematical research.
This period also saw the emergence of mathematics in the modern world as opposed to prior discussions
dominated by geometry. Many contributions to this algebraically-based mathematics came in like the Arabic
numerals, the negative numbers, and the + and – signs.

Year Event
1514 Vander Hoecke uses the + and – signs.
1515 Del Ferro discovers a formula to solve cubic equation.
1522 Adam Ries discusses the use of Arabic digits and their advantages over Roman numerals.
1540 Ferrari discovers a formula to solve quartic equation.
1544 Stifel publishes Arithmetic Integra which contains binomial coefficients and the notation +, -,
and √.
1545 Girolamo Cardano publishes his Ars Magne where he presented a general solution of the cubic
equation, and some special cases of the quartic equation.
1571 Viète begins publishing the Canon Mathematics which covers trigonometry, contains
trigonometric tables, and discusses the theory behind their construction.
1575 Maurolico publishes Arithmeticorum Libri Duo which contains examples of inductive proofs.
1591 Viète writes Introduction to the Analytical Art, using letters as symbols for quantities, both
known (consonants) and unknown (vowels).

17th Century
Another high point in mathematical history is the 17th century which saw the introduction of logarithms,
significantly reducing the effort involved in calculations. Two other great ideas from this period were
analytic geometry and calculus. The mathematical study of probability also began.

Year Event
1614 John Napier presents Napierian logarithms in Description of the Marvelous Rule of
Logarithms.
1617 Henry Briggs introduces logarithms to the base 10 in Logarithms of Numbers from 1 to 1,000.
1619 René Descartes introduces analytic geometry (Pierre de Fermat claimed that he also thought
about it independently).
1637 Descartes publishes La Géométrie which describes his application of algebra to geometry.
1654 Fermat and Pascal begins to work out the laws that govern probability through letters they
wrote to each other during the summer.
1665 Isaac Newton works on the fundamental theorem of calculus and develops his version of
infinitesimal calculus.
1673 Gottfried Leibniz also develops his version of infinitesimal calculus.
1675 Leibniz uses the modern notation for an integral for the first time.
1676 Leibniz discovers the differentials of basic functions independently of Newton.
Leibniz publishes details of his differential calculus in Nova Methodus pro Maximis et
1684 Minimis, itemque Tangentibus, which contains the rules for computing the derivatives of
powers, pruducts, and quotients.
1691 Jacob Bernoulli invents polar coordinates, a method of describing the location of points in
space using angles and distances.
1696 Guillaume de L’Hôpital states his rule for the computation of certain limits.
18th Century
New mathematical discoveries happened during this period including differential equations, infinite
series, number theory, theory of probability, solutions to algebraic equations, and complex numbers. Special
mention should be made of Euler who was to become that century’s greatest mathematician.

Year Event
1722 Abrahan de Moivre connects trigonometric functions and complex numbers.
1733 De Moivre introduces the normal distribution to approximate the binomial distribution in
probability.
1736 Leohard Euler solves the problem of the seven bridges of Königsberg, in effect, creating graph
theory. Euler’s collected works fill 74 volumes. Besides graph theory, he also develops the use
of complex numbers and founds what is now known as topology. He introduces many of
today’s familiar notations, including e, log x, sin x, cos x, f(x), and others.
1785 Marquis de Condorcet publishes Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of
Majority Decisions which is an important work in the development of the theory of
probability.
1794 Adrien-Marie Legendre publishes Eléments de Géométrie, which replaced Euclid’s Elements
as a textbook in most of Europe and, in succeeding translations, in the United States.
1799 Carl Friedrich Gauss proves the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.

19th Century
During this time, modern abstract algebra started with the invention of group theory and calculus was
extended to the complex numbers. Mathematics was branching out with, for example, non-Euclidean
geometries and statistics, but its foundations were also being made stronger with developments in set theory
and mathematical logic.

Year Event
1801 Carl Friedrich Gauss’s number theory treatise, Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, is published.
1829 Nikolai Lobachevsky develops non-Euclidean geometry, in particular hyperbolic geometry.
János Bolyai publishes his work on non-Euclidean geometry.
1832
Évariste Galois presents a general condition for the solvability of algebraic equations,
essentially founding group theory and Galois theory.
1838 Augustus De Morgan invents the term “mathematical induction” and makes the method
precise.
1847 George Boole formalizes symbolic logic in The Mathematical Analysisnof Logic, defining
what is now called Boolean algebra. Boole’s work lays the foundation of computer logic.
1854 Arthur Cayley makes the first attempt to define an abstract group.
1858 Cayley gives an abstract definition of a matrix and studies its properties.
1874 Georg Canton proves that the set of all real numbers is uncountably infinite but the set of all
real algebraic numbers is countably infinite.
1881 John Venn introduces his Venn diagramswhich become a useful tool in set theory.
Karl Pearson publishes the first in a series of 18 papersmwhichmintroduce a number of
1893 fundamental concepts to the study of statistics. These papers contain contribution to regression
analysis, the correlation coefficient, and the chi-square test of statistical significance.
1895 Cantor publishes a book about set theory containing the arithmetic of infinite cardinal
numbers.
1900 David Hilbert poses 23 problems as a challenge for the 20th century. The problems include,
among others, the continuum hypothesis, the well ordering of the real numbers, Goldbach’s
conjecture, the transcendence of powers of algebraic numbers, the Riemann hypothesis, and
the extension of Dirichlet’s principle.
20th Century
The early 20th century saw the rise of the field of mathematical logic. The trend of the 19th century
towards increasing generalization and abstraction in mathematics also continued in the 20th century. Logical
concepts like consistency and completeness were emphasized. Specialized fields of study such as group
theory, knot theory, topology, graph theory, functional analysis, chaos theory, game theory, and many more
started to develop during this period.

Year Event
1908 Ernest Zermelo axiomizes set theory.
1928 John von Neumann begins devising the principles of game theory and proves the minimax
theorem.
1933 Andrey Kolmogorov publishes Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung (Basic
Notions of the Calculus of Probability) which contains an axiomatization of probability.
1944 Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern publish Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.
1948 Claude Shannon invents information theory and applies mathematical methods to study errors
in transmitted information.
1950 Richard Hamming publishes a fundamental paper on error-detecting and error-correcting
codes.
1959 Marshall Hall publishes his famous text Theory of Groups.
1975 Benoit Mandelbrot publishes Les Objects Fractals, Forme, Hasard et Dimension which
describes the theory of fractals.
1976 Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken use a computer to prove the four color theorem.
1977 Leonard Adleman, Ronald Rivest, and Adi Shamir introduce the RSA cryptosystem.
1982 Mandelbrot publishes The Fractal Geometry of Nature which develops his theory of fractal
geometry more fully than his work of 1975.
1994 Andrew Wiles proves Fermat’s Last Theorem.
2000 The millennium Prize is put up for the solution of seven famous mathematical problems – P
versus NP, The Hodge Conjecture, The Poincaré Conjecture, The Riemann Hypothesis, Yang-
Mills Existence and Mass Gap, Navier-Strokes Existence and Smoothness, and The Birch and
Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture.

Graduate Attributes
Community Builder
Teaching Learning Activities

1. How is mathematics used to quantify and compare situations, events and phenomena?

In general, modeling is used to simulate situations / events. A function, or any other equation, such as
similarity norms, can be used to estimate the behavior of almost everything. Utility functions are functions
that state what is better than others, taking situational parameters as inputs. There are two question types of
utility functions used to count and compare situations: ordinal and cardinal.

Ordinal functions only say what is better than what. For example, for the ordinal utility function u (x), if you
have u (2) = 3, u (3) = 5 and u (4) = 10, it means it only inputs 4 better than input 3 is better than input 2, but
this does not mean input 4 is twice as good as input 3.

Cardinal functions function differently, they count how well a situation works. So, using the same example,
the input of 4 would be twice as good as the input of 3

2. What are the mathematical attributes of objects or processes and how are they measured or calculated?

It all depends on what things or processes you are trying to model and what you want your math model to
do.
For example, whether a ball is heavy or light, or dense or foamy, or large or small, or reflective or absorbent,
or you get the idea depends on what is important to the problem you are trying to solve.

3. Gather some more descriptions of mathematics given by different people throughout history.
The area of study known as mathematical history is primarily an investigation into the origin of
mathematical discoveries and, to a lesser extent, an investigation into mathematical methods and notation of
the past. Before the modern era and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new
mathematical advances were exposed only to a few locals. From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of
Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, along with Ancient Egypt and Ebla began to use arithmetic, algebra and
geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in patterns in nature, fields of astronomy and to
record time / formulate calendars.

4. The Pythagorean theorem is one of the most famous in all of mathematics. It states that the square of the
length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs. Look for a
proof of this theorem.

Assessment Tools
 Essay Writing
Assignment
Find out more about a mathematician of your choice.
 In a long bond paper write the biography of your chosen mathematician with his picture and his
contributions in the field of mathematics.

 Write your name, course and subject at the bottom of your paper.
Agreement of Policies
 All answers to the teaching learning activity should be written in yellow paper or any sheet of paper
(Copy and Answer). Write your name, course and subject in your paper.
 Keep your module as your reference for your exam. (Do not submit your module)
 Deadline for your output will be on September 21, 2020.
 Late output will have a deduction.
Teacher’s Name: Mrs. Edibell Grace D. Edil, LPT
Contact number: 09204659014
Email Address: edzedil_42784@yahoo.com
FB/Messenger account: Edz Dato-on Edil