This book records the development and changes of elementary mathematics in the world. It can be roughly divided into seven items: the appearance of numbers, the origin and development of numbers and symbols, fractions, algebra and equations, geometry, number theory and description of names, which span thousands of years. It can let readers know the glorious history and development of mathematics. This is an interesting encyclopedia reading, which combines history and mathematics.

The emergence of numbers

First of all, the concept of number appeared.

People are born with the concept of "number". Since primitive people, people can distinguish one, two and three, so they have an understanding of logarithm. In order to represent numbers, primitive people created and used an ancient but clumsy and impractical method-the knot number method. The number of objects is represented by tying a knot on the rope. In order to identify the number, an important counting method appears. This method seems clumsy now, but it is a key step for people to understand mathematics from zero to one. From this clumsy step, people also realize that the explanation of mathematics must be as concise and clear as possible. This is the first understanding of mathematics that has influenced human beings since then, and it is also a key step for human beings to understand mathematics.

The Origin and Development of Numbers and Symbols

First of all, the emergence of numbers

Soon, mankind took another big step. With the appearance of words, the most primitive numbers appeared. What is more gratifying is that people integrate their knowledge into the design. They thought of the method of "taking one generation as the smallest", which is the "carry system" in character representation. Among the numerous numbers, there are binary numbers of ancient Babylon and ancient Roman characters, but the Arabic numerals that have been passed down to this day are universal. They told us that simplicity is the best.

Now there are low-order decimal numbers such as "binary number" and "ternary number". Sometimes people think it is too concise, which makes the data too long and inconvenient to write, and the conversion of decimal Arabic numerals is also very troublesome. In fact, people are higher animals and have a strong understanding ability. Since ancient times, ten has been taken as a whole, so it is customary to use decimals. However, not everything has IQ, and it is impossible to clearly distinguish 1- 10, but two numbers can be expressed in obviously opposite ways. As a result, human beings have created "binary numbers", but they are not convenient to write, and are only suitable for computers and some intelligent machines. But it is undeniable that it has created a new form of digital expression.

Second, the emergence of symbols.

Mathematical symbols such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are the most familiar symbols for each of us, because we can't do without them not only in mathematics learning, but also in almost every day's daily life. Don't treat them so simply.

Single, it was not until the middle of17th century that it was fully formed.

French mathematician Soso used some symbols in his three arithmetic papers written in 1484, such as D for addition and M for subtraction. These two symbols first appeared in the commercial speed algorithm written by German mathematician Weidemann. He used "+"for excess and "-"for deficiency.

1, plus sign (+) and minus sign (-)

Addition and subtraction symbols "+","-",1489 German mathematician Weidemann first used these two symbols in his works, but they were officially recognized by everyone from the Dutch mathematician Heuck in 15 14. At 15 14, Heck of the Netherlands used "+"for addition and "-"for subtraction for the first time. 1544, German mathematician Steefel formally used "+"and "-"to express addition and subtraction in integer arithmetic, and these two symbols were gradually recognized as real arithmetic symbols and widely used.