February 17, 2017 Friday
Bedtime Story
John Napier and Logarithm
Let me tonight simplify the dreaded logarithmic function.
Or maybe not.
Logarithmic function, by the way, is a fairly new discovery of the
upright apes.
This is not surprising, considering the fact that higher abstract
mathematics itself came fairly late to us Homo sapiens, just about 5000 years back.
Since the Englishmen generally wrote history, or at least the version
of which is widely accepted by Anglophiles like me (this is one bias I carry on
my shoulders brazenly, for good or for bad, since I rather put my trust on
Englishmen than good Hindus or Russians or Chinese or Brazilians), the discovery
of logarithm will be attributed by me to a Scottish landowner John Napier.
John Napier was born to a nobility, who was initially privately
tutored but later when sent to school dropped out.
By the way, we are talking about 1560s and 1570s when the total
population of Scotland was a mere 1 million and Edinburg’s just 12,000.
Outbreaks of plague were common, but along with rats and mice,
human apes too continued to grow in both Edinburg and Scotland.
John Napier himself contributed 12 to Scotland, two from his first
wife and an amazing ten from his second.
In terms of religion, it was also the time when Scotland would start
to break away from the beliefs of Catholic Church and Bishop of Rome only to
start its own version of similar religion.
This whole process goes by the name of Scottish Reformation.
John Napier, our bright young rich man, after his travels from
Europe, returned back home and bought a whole castle for himself at Gartness in
1574.
He was jut 21! (This should give you a good idea of his inherited
wealth).
For reason unknown, then onwards he began to work on mathematics
and computing devices.
Why he did what he did instead of doing something “worthwhile”, I
have no idea.
Possibly he saw a future in making computation easier (and if that
was the case, he damned clearly well saw the future).
One of the artefacts that he is famous for having devised are
those small rods with number on them.
They go by the epithet of “Napier’s bones”.
They were just straight sticks with numbers on them, and using
them in a very simple way, you could convert multiplication into addition.
Just watching it work successfully is a joy and it is enough to
make your day.
You got to have a look and have a try at it.
Thanks to mon ami, I got to see these “Napier’s bones” in the
computer science museum located in Mountain View, California.
Very rightfully, it deserves a slot as one of the earliest
computing devices along with abacus.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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