All as in One (Chapter One)

“The oneness has led to intolerance and centuries of bitter, bloody battles.”

I thought this reading was the most interesting out of all of the previous ones, I found myself having to choose from a few different quotes to talk about. When they were talking about all of the ways that the number 1 was lucky and unlucky and how often we refer to numbers to relay a message or to conform something that we cooked up. ““it is unlucky to walk around the house in one slipper, which is clearly true when you stub your toe.” It seems just about right to never walk around the house with one shoe because something like that is so likely to happen but when the chapter points out the number one always seeming to occur in bad situations. I also thought it was kind of weird how they brought up the combination of superstitions and numbers, with the quote of “A one eyed person is a witch”. I am someone who isn’t so into math and when I think of numbers I automatically think of adding, dividing, multiplying etc. But this article made me think of them in a different light we use numbers for all sorts of things rather than just calculating them.

My question is who actually created these numbers, and what makes one such an “odd” number, and what makes the number two better than 1? Maybe it has something to do with how our bodies were created because if we only had one leg, it would be normal for us to only wear one slipper around the house than it would change the superstition of wearing one slipper around the house to be unlucky.

Much Ado About Reading Chapter 0

“Pythagoras didn’t quite use fractions as we know them today but he and his followers did think long and hard about sub-multiples of numbers (or factors-the smaller number s your multiply together to get larger ones) and ratios. In Fact Pythagoras made one of the first mathematical studies of music, discovering that when the lengths of several vibrating.”

When I first read this quote about Pythagoras I automatically thought about the project from last semester when Ronnie’s music video about him. I also thought about how he invented the Pythagorean Theorem that we use all the time in math. But it talks about him in a different perspective, he wasn’t all about finding equations for triangles but he used his mathematical mind-set to research something that a lot of us find very interesting which is music. It’s also crazy to think about how long ago some of the things that we learn about, in a way it makes me have a different understanding for the math that we learn. Now every time I’m forced to do the Pythagorean Theorem my mind will wonder to something a little more interesting.

My question is how do they come up with these different calculations for things? Especially without all of the technologies that we have today. Its kind of weird to think about they did this off the top of there head, just working at something for hours and we use what they (old mathematicians) Have come up with for the technology we use today.