March 06, 2017 Monday
Bedtime Story
How Trade and Commerce Aided Mathematics
Italy is not far from the Arab world.
Fibonacci, who was born in around 1175 AD happened to travel with
his father to what is now Algeria.
His father was a wealthy Italian merchant who might also have been
the consul for Pisa.
As a young boy with his father, Fibonacci travelled extensively
around the Mediterranean, soaking in the arithmetic used by the traders and the
merchants.
Traders and merchants then, as they do now, travel far and wide and
get to know ways of living other than their own.
Fibonacci at once realized the tremendous advantage the
Hindu-Arabic numeral system over the older systems of existing numbers.
He began to write them down very systematically in a book form
that he divided into four sections.
The first section was devoted completely to the novel method of
the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.
It even had in its content the means of converting the numbers
from other systems to the Hindu-Arabic notation.
(As a curiosity, I want you to also know that the second section
was devoted to commerce and had examples of currency conversion and
calculations of profits and interests.)
It can safely be said that Fibonacci besides being a mathematician
of the highest order was a Baniya too.
Among the Hindus, Baniya is the highly money-oriented mercantile
community chief characteristic of whose is indulging almost 24-hours in profit-making.
In 1202 Fibonacci finally finished this landmark treatise that
goes by the name “Liber Abaci” or “The Book of Calculation”.
In the book, Fibonacci very meticulously described a system that
he called modus Indorum or “The Method of the Indians”.
In this method he clearly describes the number from 0 to 9 and the
application of the place value to assign their value.
This is what Fibonacci writes in his book where he introduces
Modus Indorum.
“As my father was a public official away from our homeland in the
Bugia customshouse established for the Pisian merchants who frequently gathered
there, he had me in my youth brought to him, looking to find for me a useful
and comfortable future; there he wanted me to be in the study of mathematics
and to be taught for some days…
We shall continue with Fibonacci’s Modus Indorum in the nights to
come.
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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