3rd ed. Aug 2023 (expanded appendices). 2nd ed. Nov 2019 (revised to include advances in linguistics, genomics, interpretive theory, and Mesopotamian mathematics); 1st ed. (Dec 29, 2009)
Part 1 in Ancient Mathematics series. (Part 2: The Mathematics of Uruk and Susa 3500-3000 BCE, Part 3: Exploring Cuneiform Culture 8500-2500 BCE)
Abstract
How far back in time can we trace mathematical understanding and mathematical practice? When did humans acquire the neurological circuitry for the cognitive and linguistic capabilities on which mathematics depends? Advances in multiple disciplines over the past 30 years have fundamentally changed what we know about our past and about the biological capacity for, and cultural impulses behind, cognitive precision (language, number sense, cultural transmission). Exploring these questions will take us on a journey across archaeology, Assyriology, artifact analysis (close reading theory), anthropology, genomics, linguistics, neurobiology, and animal cognition.
 The Anthropology and Archaeology of Conceptual Thought leading to the Birth of Mathematics Continue reading this article…
By Assad Ebrahim, on March 14th, 2023 (10,325 views) |
Topic: Maths--General Interest, Technology
Updated May 2024 (added non-banking financial sector), Updated March 2023 (added latest bank collapses in US/EU). First published July 5, 2010 (two years after the financial collapse triggered Great Recession).
Mathematical Finance is an area of applied mathematics that has developed rapidly during the late 80s and 90s after the deregulation of U.S. financial markets, and accelerated further in the 2000s concurrently with the rise of data science/’big data’ and computational platforms able to run complex models in close to real-time. For its financial models for risk and pricing, Mathematical Finance draws upon the partial differential equations of mathematical physics, stochastic calculus, probabilistic modeling, mathematical optimization, statistics, and numerical methods. The implementation of these often complex numerical mathematical models requires efficient algorithms and exploiting the state-of-the-art in software engineering (real-time and embedded development, low latency network programming) and computing hardware (FPGAs, GPUs, and parallel and distributed processing). Taken together, the technical aspects of mathematical finance and the software/hardware aspect of financial engineering lie at the intersection of business, economics, mathematics, computer science, physics, and electrical engineering. For the technologically inclined, there are ample opportunities to contribute.
But the relevance goes beyond mathematics. There is a kernel of core financial ideas that are at the heart of the global free market capitalist system that is in place across most of the world today. These ideas affect not only economics but also politics and society. Ideally, every citizen in a democracy should understand the essential mechanics of the modern financial world and how it has arisen, regardless of whether we agree with its principles or with the impact of the financial system on social structures.
This article presents a simplified account of the rise of the modern financial marketplace including some history, and contemporary financial context. Update (2012): A highly recommended graphic novel Economix, by Michael Goodwin has just been published that presents a panoramic yet highly accessible narrative.)
Continue reading this article…
This is Part 2 in the Ancient Mathematics series. (Part 1: The Prehistoric Origins of Mathematics, Part 3: Exploring Cuneiform Culture 8500-2500 BCE)
Summary The written mathematics of ancient Iraq and Iran (Mesopotamia, Khuzistan) developed out of an administrative/bureaucratic program to control the surplus raw and manufactured goods of the settled societies of the late neolithic/early bronze age: grains & grain products, sheep & other herded animals, jugs of dairy fats & beer, rope & textiles. It evolved through a sequence of literary and mathematical innovations, each making more efficient the ability to record quantitative/metrological information and use it for planning and control. Initially, impressed tokens and pictographs were used whose meaning was clear by association. Subsequently, this repertoire was written signs was expanded in a consious effort to provide a standard, all-encompassing collection of signs/symbols (ideographs/logograms) that could represent all aspects of importance in early thought (professions, animals, foods, containers, textiles, etc.). The standard sign lists were spread through scribal schools to produce the scribes that administered the temple economies of the early city-states.
Uruk was the hegemonic centre of this innovation in mathematics and writing, starting from 3500 BCE. The increased administrative control generated economic efficiencies accelerating Uruk’s growth and which supported greater military effectiveness and the ability to dominate neighboring polities and support longer distance trading missions [Adams/2005], [Algaze/2013]. The success of Uruk’s structures had the effect of radiating the new inventions outward throughout the Greater Mesopotamian region (evidence in Aratta/Susa adoption of writing/adminstrative control), even reaching Anatolia (Turkey) in the far north (Uruk expansion phenomenon).
The gains in economic power and increased resilience to subsistence unpredictability conferred by the new planning and control capabilities, set in motion the development of a bureaucratic administrative culture in the southern Mesopotamian city states that, over the next 1000 years would reach its hypertrophic apex in the ambitious Ur III program under King Shulgi to plan, manage, and control all economic/productive assets in his vast empire through mathematics (c.2050 BCE). This required an army of scribes which in turn led to the standardization and systematization of the scribal school institution responsible for producing them.
Two examples of mathematical innovation are from the cattle redistribution center Puzrish-Dagan outside Nippur during the Ur III empire. One shows perfection of the form of tabular accounting (world’s earliest normalized two-dimensional table with rows and columns and sums in both dimensions) [Robson/2003]. The other shows the population growth modeling of a cattle-herd over 10 years with projected economic yields in dairy and cheese, solving, in modern terms, population difference equations in table form (see illustrated explanation of cuneiform tablet TCL 2, no.5499, [Nissen/1993: 97-102])
In this paper, we will look in more detail at mathematical development during the archaic period of writing (3500-3000 BCE) which gave rise to a new literate and quantitative layer in society in the main urban centres of Mesopotamia. Our thesis (which we have seen play out already in Part 1) is that technology (in this case mathematics/writing) and culture (in this case the impulse to plan/control) are inextricably linked. Their development influences the trajectory of the surrounding societies.
 Ur III mathematical model projecting annual dairy/cheese yields from a herd of 4 cows and a bull with assumptions on calving rates Download article (PDF)
Continue reading this article…
By Assad Ebrahim, on April 15th, 2010 (13,018 views) |
Topic: Education, Maths--Philosophy
An examination of mathematical methods and the search for mathematical meaning.
This article curates a reading list (most sources available freely online) organized into a set of encounters that lie outside the standard mathematics curriculum. They are intended to enrich the reader’s understanding of mathematics and its place in scientific inquiry, increase her/his connection to the historical and philosophical questions behind the mathematics of the past and present, and gain greater satisfaction from further mathematical study. The reader should come away with a better understanding of the culture of mathematics: what mathematics is, mathematical method and meaning, and the relation of mathematics to the empirical world and to science.
We look at seven topics. These may be covered in any order, to suit your particular interests.
- What is Mathematics? (Its Nature and Characteristics)
- Reality, Truth, and the Nature of Mathematical Knowledge
- What is Proof? and the Problem of Certainty
- Some Readings in the History of Mathematics and the Evolution of Its Ideas
- The Search for Foundations in Mathematics
- Mathematics and Science
- Thoughts on Mathematical Practice and Mathematical Style
There is no core body of technical material to master in this course; the important thing is a feel for how, why, and in what context the core ideas of mathematics evolved, getting to the essence of their motivation, and understanding the fruits of these efforts. The course such as the below should appeal to all those who have an itch to scratch beneath the surface of mathematics, who find themselves asking “but why?”. It could be useful in all three tiers of education: secondary, post-secondary (undergraduate), and graduate, appropriately restructured.
- Secondary school elective: to encourage bright students in mathematics, science and technology to enter the university with a broader perspective on the mathematics they will be rapidly learning there.
- University elective course: offered as a writing-intensive seminar, intended primarily for students in the sciences and engineer: mathematics, physics, engineering.
- Graduate level course: offered in the first year of graduate school in mathematics or applied mathematics as a supplementary seminar.
Continue reading this article…
By Assad Ebrahim, on March 5th, 2010 (16,698 views) |
Topic: Technology
“Smart dust”, tiny leaf sensors, wearable computing — these and a host of other sensors that make measurements and communicate without requiring human intervention can now be readily integrated into dispersed systems to provide ambient intelligence, situational awareness, and the capability for adaptive behaviors or intelligent process automation.
Whether the sensor’s output is used to control the opening and closing of relays or thermostats, or to automatically raise alerts — the integration of sensors into systems is at the heart of the promise of ubiquitous computing. With the ability to place hundreds of embedded sensors within a given coverage area, each wirelessly streaming information, the possibility of self-organizing sensor networks is increasingly becoming a reality.
This article takes a look at the sensor layer of a basic ubiquitous computing stack.
Continue reading this article…
By Assad Ebrahim, on January 15th, 2010 (13,390 views) |
Topic: Maths--History, Maths--Philosophy
The development of mathematics has had many encouraging forces: societal, technological, cultural. These have served to accelerate mathematics and have been accelerated in turn, in many cases the pair becoming locked into a mutually beneficial resonance that has dramatically energized both.
In this article, I look at some of the significant catalysts, from the rise of the leisured class in ancient times to the impact of computing in modern times.
Continue reading this article…
By Assad Ebrahim, on January 3rd, 2010 (156,737 views) |
Topic: Maths--History, Maths--Philosophy
The development of mathematics is intimately interwoven with society and culture, influencing the course of history through its applications to science and technology.
But mathematics itself has changed much over its history. Even the mathematics of the early 1800s can now seem quite strange, so great have been the changes in just the past 150 years as it has been reworked in the modern abstract approach. Though advanced mathematics may now appear arcane from the outside looking in, the present state of mathematics is the result of a natural evolution of the subject. And there is much excitement promised ahead with the rise of new mathematics and application areas in subatomic and quantum physics, in the the field of statistical learning (also called artificial intelligence or machine learning), and in numerical computing and simulation.
What follows is the story of mathematics, in a nutshell.
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