January 18, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Mathematics Reignites in Ada Lovelace
It was in fact Charles Babbage himself who engaged
Augustus De Morgan as mathematics instructor for Ada Lovelace.
Ada enjoyed learning mathematics as the
more she learnt the more she discovered that she had this innate gift of
mathematical thinking.
You must understand that this was a very
different kind of learning, a type that most of us are not used to.
It was not intended for any examination or
for any purpose as least not the purpose the way most of us perceive.
You might argue that most of us do not have
the luxury that this royal lady had in which I case I would agree with you but
it is also well known that even those with means often squander way their
wealth on worldly pleasures rather than knowledge (not that Ada Lovelace was
bereft of human vices herself).
By the year of 1840 when she was 25 Ada
wrote a letter to her mother in which she clearly stated that mathematics would
become her life mission:
“I believe myself to possess a most
singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a
discoverer of hidden realities of nature.”
Ada Lovelace was a sickly human ape both as
a child and as an adult woman, suffering from recurrent bouts of illness and
was on regular opiates in early 1840s.
You have to understand that in that
pre-medicine era opiates were one of the few medicines that actually worked,
though to what end it was largely left to the discretion of the physicians.
The physician then had a greater stock of
surgical options available to them then (consider amputation for gangrene or
realignment of bones in fractures) than medicines in their shelves.
All that their cupboards had were fancy
colorful tinctures and elixirs which for sure “worked” on the powerful placebo
effect rather than on anything else.
At this same time Babbage was working on
his analytical machine but already he was being less appreciated in his own
country as the difference engine proved to be not only a commercial failure but
also a financial disaster.
17,500 Pounds of the British Crown had sunk
down the drain for construction of this machine and nowhere was there any sign
of the machine becoming a physical reality.
Just so that you get a reasonable relation
of its worth, this amount is roughly equivalent to 2 million American dollars
of the year 2016!
Strangely enough, Babbage managed to get
attention of enlightened people in Italy of all the countries.
In 1840 Babbage gave a lecture in the
University of Turin where a certain general by the name of Luigi Federico
Menabrea sat in the lecture hall taking down notes.
Menabrea is yet another interesting
character of the analytical engine story even though he comes in here very
fleetingly.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
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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