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The word calculus is Latin for "small pebble" (the diminutive of calx, meaning "stone"), a meaning which still persists in medicine. Because such pebbles were used for counting out distances, [1] tallying votes, and doing abacus arithmetic, the word came to mean a method of computation. In this sense, it was used in English at least as early as ...
260 BC – Greece, Archimedes proved that the value of π lies between 3 + 1/7 (approx. 3.1429) and 3 + 10/71 (approx. 3.1408), that the area of a circle was equal to π multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle and that the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line is 4/3 multiplied by the area of a triangle with equal base ...
5th century BC - Democritus finds the volume of cone is 1/3 of volume of cylinder, 4th century BC - Eudoxus of Cnidus develops the method of exhaustion, 3rd century BC - Archimedes displays geometric series in The Quadrature of the Parabola. Archimedes also discovers a method which is similar to differential calculus. [1]
[3] [40] Since the days of the Sputnik in the 1950s, the sequence of mathematics courses in secondary school has not changed: Pre-algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-calculus (or Trigonometry), and Calculus. Trigonometry is usually integrated into the other courses.
[1] [2] 3000 BC: The first deciphered numeral system is that of the Egyptian numerals, a sign-value system (as opposed to a place-value system). [3] 2650 BC: The oldest extant record of a unit of length, the cubit-rod ruler, is from Nippur.
The treatise also provides values of π, [107] which Chinese mathematicians originally approximated as 3 until Liu Xin (d. 23 AD) provided a figure of 3.1457 and subsequently Zhang Heng (78–139) approximated pi as 3.1724, [114] as well as 3.162 by taking the square root of 10.
James Drewry Stewart, MSC (March 29, 1941 – December 3, 2014) was a Canadian mathematician, violinist, and professor emeritus of mathematics at McMaster University. Stewart is best known for his series of calculus textbooks used for high school, college, and university-level courses.
The Babylonians were not interested in exact solutions, but rather approximations, and so they would commonly use linear interpolation to approximate intermediate values. [7] One of the most famous tablets is the Plimpton 322 tablet , created around 1900–1600 BC, which gives a table of Pythagorean triples and represents some of the most ...