Are you one of those who detested math in school? Scientists know the reason why!

New York: Are you one of those who used to detest math during childhood and often dreamed of growing up and doing anything but math? You may now have an answer.

Researchers, including an Indian-origin scientist from Stanford University's school of medicine, have now found why some kids are better at retrieving facts fluently, crucial to solving math problems.

"This work provides insight into the dynamic changes that occur over the course of cognitive development in each child," said Vinod Menon, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences and the senior author of the study.

"The hippocampus provides a scaffold for learning and consolidating facts into long-term memory in children," Menon added.

The hippocampus is a region with many roles in shaping new memories.

In the study, 28 children solved simple math problems while receiving two functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans; the scans were done about 1.2 years apart.

The hippocampus was activated more in children's brains after one year. Regions involved in counting, including parts of the prefrontal and parietal cortex, were activated less.

The scientists saw changes in the degree to which the hippocampus was connected to other parts of children's brains, with several parts of the prefrontal, anterior temporal cortex and parietal cortex more strongly connected to the hippocampus after one year.

Crucially, the stronger these connections, the greater was each individual child's ability to retrieve math facts from memory, the findings showed.

The study appeared in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Reference:http://www.news18.com/news/buzz/these-memes-from-ajay-devgns-upcoming-movie-raid-have-taken-over-the-internet-1656537.html

Claude Shannon: Google Doodles 100th Birthday of 'Father of Information Theory' Who Coined the Term 'Bit'

New Delhi: Known as the 'father of information theory', Claude Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer.

As a cryptographer for the US government in World War II, Shannon developed the first unbreakable cipher. He juggled between tinkering with electronic switches to developing an electromechanic mouse called 'Theseus' which could teach itself to navigate a maze, much like the modern-day artificial intelligence.He was often spotted in the halls of Bell Labs on a unicycle, and invented such devices as the rocket-powered frisbee and flame-throwing trumpet.

The mathematician is most famous for his 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', published in 1949, in which he introduced information theory, the branch of mathematics focused on transmitting digital data. It was in this work that he coined the term 'bit' - the fundamental unit of information which relates to digital certainty: true or false, on or off, yes or no.Shannon is also known to have worked with Albert Einstein and Alan Turing. His work in electronic communications and signal processing gained him the title of the 'father of information theory' which led to revolutionary changes in storage and transmission of data.

Commemorating what would have been his 100th birthday, Google has posted a doodle created by artist Nate Swinehart celebrating the brilliance and lightheartedness of the father of modern communication.

Refrence:http://www.news18.com/news/tech/google-doodle-100th-birthday-of-mathematician-claude-shannon-1236659.html

Indians Invented 'Zero' 500 Years Earlier Than Thought: Study

London: An ancient Indian manuscript, dating back to the third century, has revealed the oldest recorded use of 'zero' - pushing back one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics back by over 500 years, Oxford scientists say.

Bakhshali manuscript was found in 1881, buried in a field in what was then an Indian village called Bakhshali, now in Pakistan. It has been at the Bodleian Libraries in the UK since 1902.
Researchers at University of Oxford in the UK used carbon dating to trace the origins of zero to the Bakhshali manuscript.
They found that the text contained hundreds of zeroes, putting the birth of 'zero' or 'nought' as it is also known, at 500 years earlier than scholars first thought.

The text dates back to the third or fourth century, making it the oldest recorded use of the symbol.

Previous studies asserted that the Bakhshali manuscript probably dated from between the 8th and the 12th century.
However, new carbon dating reveals that the reason why it was previously so difficult for scholars to pinpoint the Bakhshali manuscript's date is because the manuscript, which consists of 70 fragile leaves of birch bark, is in fact composed of material from at least three different periods.

"Determining the date of the Bakhshali manuscript is of vital importance to the history of mathematics and the study of early South Asian culture," said Richard Ovenden from Bodleian Libraries.

The concept of the symbol as we know and use today, began as a simple dot, which was widely used as a 'placeholder' to represent orders of magnitude in the ancient Indian numbers system for example 10s, 100s and 1000s, researchers said.

It features prominently in the Bakhshali manuscript, which is widely acknowledged as the oldest Indian mathematical text, they said.
The earliest recorded example of the use of zero was previously believed to be a 9th century inscription of the symbol on the wall of a temple in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh.

Although a number of ancient cultures including the ancient Mayans and Babylonians also used the zero placeholder, the dot's use in the Bakhshali manuscript is the one that ultimately evolved into the symbol that we use today, researchers said.

"The creation of zero as a number in its own right, which evolved from the placeholder dot symbol found in the Bakhshali manuscript, was one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of mathematics," said Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

"We now know that it was as early as the 3rd century that mathematicians in India planted the seed of the idea that would later become so fundamental to the modern world. The findings show how vibrant mathematics have been in the Indian sub-continent for centuries," du Sautoy added.
Reference:http://www.news18.com/news/india/indians-invented-zero-500-years-earlier-than-thought-study-1520267.html

53% of youth struggle with basic maths: study continues....

Hopes on new syllabus

While the Tamil Nadu government is on the brink of implementing a revamped curriculum for State board schools, a teacher from a government school in Chennai said that the new syllabus, which promises to shift the focus from evaluation to learning, would bring about a change.

The report said that cellphone penetration was found to be at a high. Only 3.5% of the sample from Madurai stated that they had never used a mobile phone while nearly 27.1% of them said that they had never used a computer.

Literacy levels of family

The survey also indicated that only 11% of the mothers and 15% of the fathers of the youth surveyed had passed Class X.

“This too, we believe, would have a bearing on the aspirations of the youth that we met as part of the study,” said B. Oliver, State head of Pratham Foundation, an organisation committed to improving the quality of education in the country.

Speaking about the survey, he said that financial calculations, maps and general knowledge, daily tasks such as adding weights and telling time as well as digital literacy were included in the survey this year in a departure from the previous editions of the study.

“It has been nearly seven years since the implementation of the Right to Education Act, and with Central government initiatives such as ‘Digital India’ picking up pace, we based our study on the general levels of awareness and exposure of youth in rural districts as well as their basic abilities,” he explained.

reference: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/53-of-youth-struggle-with-basic-maths-study/article22452570.ece

53% of youth struggle with basic maths: study

Even simple skills such as reading and telling time are worryingly lacking, according to the Annual Status of Education Report

While 74.6% of youth between the ages of 14 and 18 in Madurai were found to be able to read full sentences, nearly 53% were not able to divide numbers, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2017 has indicated.

The survey throws light on the enrolment and basic learning abilities of young students across the country.

The report, which was released on Tuesday, focussed on the theme ‘Beyond Basics’ where youth from selected districts across the country were surveyed on the basis of four domains — activity, ability, awareness and aspirations.

In Tamil Nadu, the survey was carried out in 925 households across 60 villages in Madurai district. As many as 1,044 youth participated in the study.

Reading deficit

The report indicated that 28% of the youth surveyed in the district could not understand three out of four instructions given to them. “While several initiatives are being taken to improve the reading and writing skills at the elementary level in rural schools, teachers should also ensure that they do not stick to the textbooks alone and involve students in more practical exercises, which will improve comprehension,” said Jim Jesudoss, executive director of Sakthi Vidiyal, an NGO based in Madurai.

Incidentally, the Minister for School Education K.A. Sengottaiyan announced on Tuesday that English newspapers would be distributed to 31,322 schools across the State to improve the reading and comprehension levels of students.Among the tasks given as part of the survey pertaining to general knowledge, 42.2% of the youth in Madurai could not identify their State on a map. Even across the country, 42% of the youth could not identify their States, the report revealed.With regard to daily tasks, nearly 33% of the youth surveyed, most of whom were above Class IX or X, were unable to tell time and nearly 54% of them were unable to calculate time as well.

REFERENCE:http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/53-of-youth-struggle-with-basic-maths-study/article22452570.ece

5 GEREATEST MATHEMATICAL INVENTIONS CONTINUED....

Pierre de Fermat’s analysis of numbers and his examining of the Diophantine equations remains the cornerstone for work done in later mathematical research in the 20th and 21st century, hundreds of years after his death.

A French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality.

5. If you are a math lover, you will never forget the mathematical achievements of Greek antiquity. The most seminal and influential of all Greek mathematicians is Euclid. Euclid covered almost all areas of mathematics – such as algebra and plane geometry in his book- Elements. This book remain a staple in all graduate level mathematics classes and even after 2000 years of its creation, has been the centerpiece of geometry and its laws. Written in the year 300 BC, Euclid introduced a set of axioms that went around to demonstrate the mathematical exactitude of the theorems that follow naturally. Along with Pythagoras, Euclid remains the father of geometry in mathematics. From Dostoevsky to Albert Einstein, Euclid’s Elements remains a path breaking work in mathematics.

reference:http://www.cobels.in/blogs/5-greatest-mathematical-inventions-by-mathematician-in-history/

5 GREATEST MATHEMATICAL INVENTIONS

Math is all about loving numbers and understanding how life revolves around it. Some of us still revel in the math fun games that we participated in. To hunker down a subjective list of the greatest mathematical discoveries of all time may be difficult, but here are a list of 5 greatest mathematical inventions in history:

1. The Euler’s identity is a stunning formula that is both useful and deceiving in its essence. The Euler’s number is the base of the natural algorithm and is equal to 2.718. Euler is often regarded as the father of mathematics and the greatest physicist of all time Richerd Feynman regarded the identity as a remarkable formula ever. Euler’s equation helps answer the most difficult of questions in arithmetic.

Richard Phillips Feynman, was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics.

2. The fast Fourier Transforms are the pillars of the modern computing age. The discrete Fourier Transform was first introduced by Fourier in the early part of the 19th Century and can break the signals of sound waves and wireless notifications into composite frequencies. There are many applications of the fast and discrete Fourier transform. It remains the single biggest algorithm ever discovered in mathematics.

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations.

3. Godel’s theorems are the next big axiomatic system, which is an imperfect analogy found in the liar paradox. In this paradox, if you begin with a machine, you can feed it any statement and output possible with an unfailing accuracy. The results of Godel’s theorems are in use even today and the computational systems still use this systematically to discover newer theorems.

Known for Godel’s incompleteness theorems, Godel’s completeness theorem, the consistency of the Continuum hypothesis with ZFC, Gödel metric, Godel’s ontological proof.

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