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Mathematicians
Often, to completely understand the importance of a mathematical theory, it's essential to know about the person who developed it. This category is where all questions about historically significant mathematicians should be asked.
6,570 Questions
What did Rene descartes contribute to physics?
Descartes created the most popular theory on planetary motion. He also contributed to the theories and laws of motion as well as the laws of nature.
What is human person according to René Descartes?
René Descartes believed that every human us a "noble savage" when in the state of nature.
What 4 letter words beginning with A are in Archimedes?
acre, aids, aims, airs, amid, amie, amir, arch, aide, ache, acid, arcs, ares, arid, arms, acme, aces, aced
to draw a euler line, you must know how to draw the following terms... orthocenter, circumcenter, and centriod of a triangle, once you have drawn the following points, connect them to make a straight line, if they don't form a straight line, try again, and be as accurate as possible :)
Why did the Archimedes need to know to work out the density of a substance?
Weight vs volume. PLace object in container already full of water. Measure volume of liquid displaced. weight object. weight divided by volume equals density
Why is Muhammad ibn musa al-khwarizmi called father of algebra?
he was often thought of as the father of algebra because he was the first to teach algebra in such an elementary way.
Why was newton outraged when in 1684 German mathematician Wilhem Leibniz published a calculus book?
The argument between Newton and Liebniz (and others) revolved around whether or not Newton was the first to invent calculus and/or if Leibniz developed his calculus independently of Newton or if he simply used different notation.
The problem was that Newton did not publish his initial work.
What is the Archimedes screw used for today?
The Archimedes screw is used for irrigating crops and liftin water from mines and ship bilges.
What where Francois Viete's contributions to mathematics?
One of his major contributions was his innovated treatment of algebraic expressions.
What exactly is the Mandelbrot Set and what does it represent?
The Mandelbrot set is a set of points satisfying a particular criterion (discussed in more detail below). It doesn't "represent" anything, it's just a set of points. The colorful images you sometimes see are not just the Mandelbrot set (a point is either in the set or it isn't), but also points outside the set colored in a particular way which can be thought of as representing how long it took to decide that the point was not in the set.
The way to generate a Mandelbrot set is this:
For each point c in some region of the complex plane (a cartesian coordinate system where the X value represents the "real" part of a complex number and the Y value represents the "imaginary" part of the complex number), a mathematical operation is performed. This operation is simply to iterate the following equation:
zn+1 = zn2 + c
(where z0 = 0).
If the absolute value of zn remains bounded, the point c is in the Mandelbrot set. If, however, the value of zn goes to infinity as n goes to infinity, then the point is not in the set.
The coloring is generally based on the number of calculations (basically, the value of n) before the absolute value got larger than some cutoff (often the cutoff is 2; once the absolute value reaches 2, the z value is certain to go to infinity eventually).
The interesting thing about the Mandelbrot set is that it's not a simple shape, as you might initially expect, but a highly irregular shape. Benoit Mandelbrot, for whom the set is named, coined the term "fractal" for such complicated shapes.
Gauss is ranked along with Archimedes and Newton as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all times.
How did Fibonacci find the Fibonacci sequence?
It is said that he was modelling rabbit population. Each pair of rabbits needed to be two periods old before they could breed and then they would produce a pair of rabbits. The first lot of rabbits then would keep producing a fresh pair of rabbits every period after that - forever! The newly born rabbits would be juveniles until they reached period 2 when they, too, would join the breeding population.
Start with 1 pair in period 1. In period 2 they are still juveniles. In period 3 they breed 1 pair. So that makes two pairs. In period 4, they breed again but their offspring are still juveniles so one more pair which makes 3 pairs. In the next period, the original pair breed , and their first set of offspring breed so 2 more pairs, and so on.
This gives rise to the recursive formula for the Fibonacci sequence:
t(1) = 1
t(2) = 1
and t(n) = t(n-2) + t(n-1) for n > 2
