Chinese History of Mathematics

Chinese History of Mathematics

Interesting Facts

Concept of Zero

• Ancient Chinese mathematicians did not have a concept of zero.
• When using counting rods, they would leave a blank space in place of zero.
• When they tried to write down this blank space

• Mathematics in China dates back to the first and second millenniums BCE. (simple mathematical inscriptions on tortoise shells date back to the Shang Dynasty, from 1600-1050 BCE.
• In the final centuries BCE, Greek mathematics began to diminish.
• At the same time, Chinese mathematics was experiencing great advances.

Origin of Math in China

The Creation Geometric Sequence

Interesting Fact

• Geometric sequence or progression is a sequence of numbers where each term after the first is found by multiply the previous one by a fixed, non-zero number
• This idea was first developed during the Chinese Han Dynasty

• In the 4th century B.C. the Chinese began to build the Great Wall of China.
• They realized that they needed to measure distances, angles of elevation, and amounts of materials.
• They finally developed a number system that laid the foundation for the way we count today.

The Origin of Math

• The simple but efficient ancient Chinese numbering system, which dates back to at least the 2nd millennium BC, used small bamboo rods arranged to represent the numbers 1 to 9, which were then places in columns representing units, tens, hundreds, thousands.

• Math originated in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece.
• When ancient Greece entered its Dark Age mathematical progress in the west came to a end.

• At Huangdi's request these mathematics came up with a plan for him to sleep with every woman in his harem(the part of the court reserved for women) -sexual partners, and wives.
• The "Yellow Emperor" Huangdi highly valued the mathematicians of his of his court and lived his life strictly according to what they told him.
• This plan laid the basis for geometric sequence

More Interesting Facts

(Pascal's Triangle)

Sources

Mathematics in Ancient China Society

• http://www.crystalinks.com/chinamath.html
• http://www.storyofmathematics.com/chinese.html
• http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/science/chinamath.htm

• 1238 AD
• Featured in rudimentary texts
• Helps expand binomial expressions
• Patterns
• Always bordered by 1
• Symmetrical
• Sums of the rows double each row

• Math ran the legal system, taxation system, standardized system of measuring weights, and the money system.
• To educate civil servants of the empire about math, a textbook was written in 200 BC. called the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art.
• The book has 246 math problems concerning trade, payment of wages, and taxes.
• These problems was the central theme of mathematics solving equations.
• The Chinese used equations when discerning problems such as how much a fruit weighs.

• The Nine Chapters also had the Chinese Remainder Theorem
• Chinese Remainder Theorem knowing the number that is left when the unknown number is divided by a given number