Is math discovered or invented? - Jeff Dekofsky
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Date: 2020-08-22
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Comments and reviews: 10
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Dear Ted-ed: Amateur research mathematician here, from my own experience, I can say that it is highly egocentric of us humans to perceive that math is invented. There are many researches published out of stumbling upon things by accident or discovering something that is already there. I wrote a lot of researches and all of them were not invented by me, I just stumbled upon a pattern or set of patterns that are already there. To give you a fresh example, I discovered that in the powers of integers: (2, 3. 4. 5) there is a finite cyclical pattern of every digit. I'll give the details and you check it yourself. Let's do the power of 3: For the first digit which is on the right the patterns are 4 cardinals: 3, 9, 7, 1. --3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729 --see? the digits on the right will always be 3, 9, 7, 1. right? it's already there. Didn't invent that. Now, for the 2nd digit pattern, it is 20 of them. 2843868444260268196000. Dunno if someone found this yes but I'll just stop there for copyright reasons. and the pattern goes on and on and it gets larger and larger. Now, did i invent that? certainly not. The greatest mathematicians will also say that they just found it. It''s not an invention if it is than we can have our way with all the numbers.
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Dear Ted-ed: Amateur research mathematician here, from my own experience, I can say that it is highly egocentric of us humans to perceive that math is invented. There are many researches published out of stumbling upon things by accident or discovering something that is already there. I wrote a lot of researches and all of them were not invented by me, I just stumbled upon a pattern or set of patterns that are already there. To give you a fresh example, I discovered that in the powers of integers: (2, 3. 4. 5) there is a finite cyclical pattern of every digit. I'll give the details and you check it yourself. Let's do the power of 3: For the first digit which is on the right the patterns are 4 cardinals: 3, 9, 7, 1. --3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729 --see? the digits on the right will always be 3, 9, 7, 1. right? it's already there. Didn't invent that. Now, for the 2nd digit pattern, it is 20 of them. 2843868444260268196000. Dunno if someone found this yes but I'll just stop there for copyright reasons. and the pattern goes on and on and it gets larger and larger. Now, did i invent that? certainly not. The greatest mathematicians will also say that they just found it. It''s not an invention if it is than we can have our way with all the numbers.
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Vinay
For me, its. 1st person universe or god renders itself as 3rd person whenever a mind tries to locate or resolve the position. So, indeed in 3rd person point of view, math is discovered and numbers are the representation of discovery in 3rd person memory and logical brain. Whereas from 1st person, there is no question of numbers, everything is an illusion arisen from the misunderstanding that 3rd person is real and it's all there is, so indeed math is an invention and so is the universe.
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For me, its. 1st person universe or god renders itself as 3rd person whenever a mind tries to locate or resolve the position. So, indeed in 3rd person point of view, math is discovered and numbers are the representation of discovery in 3rd person memory and logical brain. Whereas from 1st person, there is no question of numbers, everything is an illusion arisen from the misunderstanding that 3rd person is real and it's all there is, so indeed math is an invention and so is the universe.
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ted_ed
Think about this: Human brain is part of the universe. It uses something to describe the universe. By definition, it, the brain, cannot invent anything, since it is limited by being a part of what is trying to describe. So math is something symbolic but refers to something real. That is why simple equations like the Pythagorean theorem found a meaning in modern physics many centuries after their discovery. probably.
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Think about this: Human brain is part of the universe. It uses something to describe the universe. By definition, it, the brain, cannot invent anything, since it is limited by being a part of what is trying to describe. So math is something symbolic but refers to something real. That is why simple equations like the Pythagorean theorem found a meaning in modern physics many centuries after their discovery. probably.
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Move
Is math discovered or invented?
Shouldn't we define the meaning of mathematics strictly first, in order to get the answer to this?
Nature is discovered. Mathematics, science, and all other things are human inventions. It is because, negative numbers are invisible and the pi cannot be accurately obtained, and the reality of science is only better hypotheses.
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Is math discovered or invented?
Shouldn't we define the meaning of mathematics strictly first, in order to get the answer to this?
Nature is discovered. Mathematics, science, and all other things are human inventions. It is because, negative numbers are invisible and the pi cannot be accurately obtained, and the reality of science is only better hypotheses.
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Excellent
Math and science started in Africa and thats why this video doesn't sit well with me. Plato and tesla studied math and science in Africa. For you to understand how it came about you should go back to African history. What you doing right now is trying to figure this out the origin by starting in the middle of the story. Go even further, back to Africa
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Math and science started in Africa and thats why this video doesn't sit well with me. Plato and tesla studied math and science in Africa. For you to understand how it came about you should go back to African history. What you doing right now is trying to figure this out the origin by starting in the middle of the story. Go even further, back to Africa
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M. B
Discovery. If you are going to divide the amount of apples in my hands for the group, so that you can share them equally. Then you would have to start counting. That's math, and it has always existed. And always been used, even before there was a name for it. But numbers, is an invention to explain the discovery.
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Discovery. If you are going to divide the amount of apples in my hands for the group, so that you can share them equally. Then you would have to start counting. That's math, and it has always existed. And always been used, even before there was a name for it. But numbers, is an invention to explain the discovery.
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Tanmay
Is it not just what we assume to be, instead of actually being a reality, it could be what we observed and then quantified to make it logical for ourselves.
There might have been many trials and errors which lead it to be refined and relatively perfected in accordance to what we need it for.
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Is it not just what we assume to be, instead of actually being a reality, it could be what we observed and then quantified to make it logical for ourselves.
There might have been many trials and errors which lead it to be refined and relatively perfected in accordance to what we need it for.
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Greg
The RSA example isn't a good example because the application of that math/theory is done in computers which are just machines built to perform abstract logic we have invented. There is no physical representation or application of prime factorization / encryption
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The RSA example isn't a good example because the application of that math/theory is done in computers which are just machines built to perform abstract logic we have invented. There is no physical representation or application of prime factorization / encryption
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Lukys
Iam gonna learn so hard and in the future iam going to make a time machine and go to the time when the person invented maths and gonna bring that person with me to the future and show him/her what a sin they had did Hope he undrrstands
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Iam gonna learn so hard and in the future iam going to make a time machine and go to the time when the person invented maths and gonna bring that person with me to the future and show him/her what a sin they had did Hope he undrrstands
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Cng
Given that information, can animals like dogs and cats discover math and create some sort of their own mathematical expression in the far future?
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Sike lol i dont even know what im talking about
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Given that information, can animals like dogs and cats discover math and create some sort of their own mathematical expression in the far future?
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Sike lol i dont even know what im talking about
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