Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Mathematical collaborations of unprecedented size and scope took place. An example is the classification of finite simple groups (also called the "enormous theorem"), whose proof between 1955 and 2004 required 500-odd journal articles by about 100 authors, and filling tens of thousands of pages. [214]
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; [a] 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics.
Mathematics is the language of nature, and is the primary conceptual structure we would have in common with extraterrestrial aliens, if any such there be. Mathematical proof is the gateway to a realm of transcendent truth. Reasoning is logic, and logic is essentially mathematical. Hence mathematics structures all possible reasoning.
The independence of the mathematical objects is such that they are non physical and do not exist in space or time. Neither does their existence rely on thought or language. For this reason, mathematical proofs are discovered, not invented. The proof existed before its discovery, and merely became known to the one who discovered it. [13]
[8] [9] Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. [10] Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.
The resolution of this crisis involved the rise of a new mathematical discipline called mathematical logic that includes set theory, model theory, proof theory, computability and computational complexity theory, and more recently, parts of computer science. Subsequent discoveries in the 20th century then stabilized the foundations of ...
Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of abstract objects that consist of either abstractions from nature or—in modern mathematics—purely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to prove properties of objects, a proof consisting of a succession of ...
The expression "mathematical proof" is used by lay people to refer to using mathematical methods or arguing with mathematical objects, such as numbers, to demonstrate something about everyday life, or when data used in an argument is numerical. It is sometimes also used to mean a "statistical proof" (below), especially when used to argue from data.