1.
Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
2.
Bertrand Russell
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Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist and he was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British revolt against idealism and he is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th centurys premier logicians, with A. N. Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics. His philosophical essay On Denoting has been considered a paradigm of philosophy, Russell mostly was a prominent anti-war activist, he championed anti-imperialism. Occasionally, he advocated preventive nuclear war, before the opportunity provided by the monopoly is gone. He went to prison for his pacifism during World War I, in 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell was born on 18 May 1872 at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire and his parents, Viscount and Viscountess Amberley, were radical for their times. Lord Amberley consented to his wifes affair with their childrens tutor, both were early advocates of birth control at a time when this was considered scandalous. Lord Amberley was an atheist and his atheism was evident when he asked the philosopher John Stuart Mill to act as Russells secular godfather, Mill died the year after Russells birth, but his writings had a great effect on Russells life. His paternal grandfather, the Earl Russell, had asked twice by Queen Victoria to form a government. The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power, Lady Amberley was the daughter of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. Russell often feared the ridicule of his grandmother, one of the campaigners for education of women. Russell had two siblings, brother Frank, and sister Rachel, in June 1874 Russells mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachels death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents and his grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell, was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russells childhood, the countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberleys will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Her favourite Bible verse, Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil, the atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality, Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings
3.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
4.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
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Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on 30 April 1777 in Brunswick, in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, as the son of poor working-class parents. Gauss later solved this puzzle about his birthdate in the context of finding the date of Easter and he was christened and confirmed in a church near the school he attended as a child. A contested story relates that, when he was eight, he figured out how to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100, there are many other anecdotes about his precocity while a toddler, and he made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. He completed Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, his opus, in 1798 at the age of 21. This work was fundamental in consolidating number theory as a discipline and has shaped the field to the present day, while at university, Gauss independently rediscovered several important theorems. Gauss was so pleased by this result that he requested that a regular heptadecagon be inscribed on his tombstone, the stonemason declined, stating that the difficult construction would essentially look like a circle. The year 1796 was most productive for both Gauss and number theory and he discovered a construction of the heptadecagon on 30 March. He further advanced modular arithmetic, greatly simplifying manipulations in number theory, on 8 April he became the first to prove the quadratic reciprocity law. This remarkably general law allows mathematicians to determine the solvability of any quadratic equation in modular arithmetic, the prime number theorem, conjectured on 31 May, gives a good understanding of how the prime numbers are distributed among the integers. Gauss also discovered that every integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers on 10 July and then jotted down in his diary the note, ΕΥΡΗΚΑ. On October 1 he published a result on the number of solutions of polynomials with coefficients in finite fields, in 1831 Gauss developed a fruitful collaboration with the physics professor Wilhelm Weber, leading to new knowledge in magnetism and the discovery of Kirchhoffs circuit laws in electricity. It was during this time that he formulated his namesake law and they constructed the first electromechanical telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in Göttingen. In 1840, Gauss published his influential Dioptrische Untersuchungen, in which he gave the first systematic analysis on the formation of images under a paraxial approximation. Among his results, Gauss showed that under a paraxial approximation an optical system can be characterized by its cardinal points and he derived the Gaussian lens formula. In 1845, he became associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, in 1854, Gauss selected the topic for Bernhard Riemanns Habilitationvortrag, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen. On the way home from Riemanns lecture, Weber reported that Gauss was full of praise, Gauss died in Göttingen, on 23 February 1855 and is interred in the Albani Cemetery there. Two individuals gave eulogies at his funeral, Gausss son-in-law Heinrich Ewald and Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen and his brain was preserved and was studied by Rudolf Wagner who found its mass to be 1,492 grams and the cerebral area equal to 219,588 square millimeters. Highly developed convolutions were also found, which in the early 20th century were suggested as the explanation of his genius, Gauss was a Lutheran Protestant, a member of the St. Albans Evangelical Lutheran church in Göttingen
5.
Boeotia
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Boeotia, sometimes alternatively Latinised as Beotia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece and it was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and its largest city is Thebes, Boeotia lies to the north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It also has a coastline on the Gulf of Euboea. It bordered on Megaris in the south, Attica in the southeast, Euboea in the northeast, Opuntian Locris in the north and Phocis in the west. The main mountain ranges of Boeotia are Mount Parnassus in the west, Mount Helicon in the southwest, Cithaeron in the south and its longest river, the Cephissus, flows in the central part, where most of the low-lying areas of Boeotia are found. Lake Copais was a lake in the center of Boeotia. It was drained in the 19th century, lake Yliki is a large lake near Thebes. The earliest inhabitants of Boeotia, associated with the city of Orchomenus, were called Minyans, pausanias mentions that Minyans established the maritime Ionian city of Teos, and occupied the islands of Lemnos and Thera. The Argonauts were sometimes referred to as Minyans, also, according to legend the citizens of Thebes paid an annual tribute to their king Erginus. The early wealth and power of Boeotia is shown by the reputation and visible Mycenean remains of several of its cities, especially Orchomenus, the origin of the name Boeotians may lie in the mountain Boeon in Epirus. Some toponyms and the common Aeolic dialect indicate that the Boeotians were related to the Thessalians and they moved south and settled in another rich plain, while others filtered across the Aegean and settled on Lesbos and in Aeolis in Asia Minor. Others are said to have stayed in Thessaly, withdrawing into the hill country, many ancient Greek legends originated or are set in this region. The older myths took their form during the Mycenean age when the Mycenean Greeks established themselves in Boeotia. Many of them are related to the myths of Argos, and others indicate connections with Phoenicia, Boeotia was also notable for the ancient oracular shrine of Trophonius at Lebadea. Graea, an ancient city in Boeotia, is thought to be the origin of the Latin word Graecus, from which English derives the words Greece. The major poets Hesiod and Pindar were Boeotians, on the other hand, the lack of good harbours hindered its maritime development. The importance of the legendary Minyae has been confirmed by archaeological remains, the Boeotian population entered the land from the north possibly before the Dorian invasion
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Thought
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Thought refers to ideas or arrangements of ideas that are the result of the process of thinking. Though thinking is an activity considered essential to humanity, there is no consensus as to how we define or understand it. Thinking allows humans to sense of, interpret, represent or model the world they experience. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, the word thought comes from Old English þoht, or geþoht, from stem of þencan to conceive of in the mind, consider. Definitions of thought may also be derived directly or indirectly from theories of thought, the notion of the fundamental role of non-cognitive understanding in rendering possible thematic consciousness informed the discussion surrounding Artificial Intelligence during the 1970s and 1980s. Phenomenology, however, is not the approach to thinking in modern Western philosophy. The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes. The main aim of working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes. Someones desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move his or her body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what he or she wants. The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties. A related problem is to explain how propositional attitudes can cause that individuals neurons to fire. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes, the above reflects a classical, functional description of how we work as cognitive, thinking systems. Therefore, functional analysis of the mind alone will always leave us with the problem which cannot be solved. A neuron is a cell in the nervous system that processes. Neurons are the components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions, interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the brain and spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the nervous system. Neurons do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being destroyed, psychologists have concentrated on thinking as an intellectual exertion aimed at finding an answer to a question or the solution of a practical problem
7.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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Leibnizs notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and he became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. He also refined the number system, which is the foundation of virtually all digital computers. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th-century advocates of rationalism and he wrote works on philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Leibnizs contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and he wrote in several languages, but primarily in Latin, French, and German. There is no complete gathering of the writings of Leibniz in English, Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1,1646, toward the end of the Thirty Years War, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his journal,21. Juny am Sontag 1646 Ist mein Sohn Gottfried Wilhelm, post sextam vespertinam 1/4 uff 7 uhr abents zur welt gebohren, in English, On Sunday 21 June 1646, my son Gottfried Wilhelm is born into the world a quarter after six in the evening, in Aquarius. Leibniz was baptized on July 3 of that year at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig and his father died when he was six and a half years old, and from that point on he was raised by his mother. Her teachings influenced Leibnizs philosophical thoughts in his later life, Leibnizs father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and the boy later inherited his fathers personal library. He was given access to it from the age of seven. Access to his fathers library, largely written in Latin, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language and he also composed 300 hexameters of Latin verse, in a single morning, for a special event at school at the age of 13. In April 1661 he enrolled in his fathers former university at age 15 and he defended his Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui, which addressed the principle of individuation, on June 9,1663. Leibniz earned his masters degree in Philosophy on February 7,1664, after one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelors degree in Law on September 28,1665. His dissertation was titled De conditionibus, in early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, De Arte Combinatoria, the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666. His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, in 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibnizs doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz then enrolled in the University of Altdorf and quickly submitted a thesis, the title of his thesis was Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure. Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666 and he next declined the offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction
8.
Hyperbolic geometry
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In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry. Hyperbolic plane geometry is also the geometry of saddle surface or pseudospherical surfaces, surfaces with a constant negative Gaussian curvature, a modern use of hyperbolic geometry is in the theory of special relativity, particularly Minkowski spacetime and gyrovector space. In Russia it is commonly called Lobachevskian geometry, named one of its discoverers. This page is mainly about the 2-dimensional hyperbolic geometry and the differences and similarities between Euclidean and hyperbolic geometry, Hyperbolic geometry can be extended to three and more dimensions, see hyperbolic space for more on the three and higher dimensional cases. Hyperbolic geometry is closely related to Euclidean geometry than it seems. When the parallel postulate is removed from Euclidean geometry the resulting geometry is absolute geometry, there are two kinds of absolute geometry, Euclidean and hyperbolic. All theorems of geometry, including the first 28 propositions of book one of Euclids Elements, are valid in Euclidean. Propositions 27 and 28 of Book One of Euclids Elements prove the existence of parallel/non-intersecting lines and this difference also has many consequences, concepts that are equivalent in Euclidean geometry are not equivalent in hyperbolic geometry, new concepts need to be introduced. Further, because of the angle of parallelism hyperbolic geometry has an absolute scale, single lines in hyperbolic geometry have exactly the same properties as single straight lines in Euclidean geometry. For example, two points define a line, and lines can be infinitely extended. Two intersecting lines have the properties as two intersecting lines in Euclidean geometry. For example, two lines can intersect in no more than one point, intersecting lines have equal opposite angles, when we add a third line then there are properties of intersecting lines that differ from intersecting lines in Euclidean geometry. For example, given 2 intersecting lines there are many lines that do not intersect either of the given lines. While in some models lines look different they do have these properties, non-intersecting lines in hyperbolic geometry also have properties that differ from non-intersecting lines in Euclidean geometry, For any line R and any point P which does not lie on R. In the plane containing line R and point P there are at least two lines through P that do not intersect R. This implies that there are through P an infinite number of lines that do not intersect R. All other non-intersecting lines have a point of distance and diverge from both sides of that point, and are called ultraparallel, diverging parallel or sometimes non-intersecting. Some geometers simply use parallel lines instead of limiting parallel lines and these limiting parallels make an angle θ with PB, this angle depends only on the Gaussian curvature of the plane and the distance PB and is called the angle of parallelism
9.
David Hilbert
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David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th, Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry. He also formulated the theory of Hilbert spaces, one of the foundations of functional analysis, Hilbert adopted and warmly defended Georg Cantors set theory and transfinite numbers. A famous example of his leadership in mathematics is his 1900 presentation of a collection of problems set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century. Hilbert and his students contributed significantly to establishing rigor and developed important tools used in mathematical physics. Hilbert is known as one of the founders of theory and mathematical logic. In late 1872, Hilbert entered the Friedrichskolleg Gymnasium, but, after a period, he transferred to. Upon graduation, in autumn 1880, Hilbert enrolled at the University of Königsberg, in early 1882, Hermann Minkowski, returned to Königsberg and entered the university. Hilbert knew his luck when he saw it, in spite of his fathers disapproval, he soon became friends with the shy, gifted Minkowski. In 1884, Adolf Hurwitz arrived from Göttingen as an Extraordinarius, Hilbert obtained his doctorate in 1885, with a dissertation, written under Ferdinand von Lindemann, titled Über invariante Eigenschaften spezieller binärer Formen, insbesondere der Kugelfunktionen. Hilbert remained at the University of Königsberg as a Privatdozent from 1886 to 1895, in 1895, as a result of intervention on his behalf by Felix Klein, he obtained the position of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Göttingen. During the Klein and Hilbert years, Göttingen became the preeminent institution in the mathematical world and he remained there for the rest of his life. Among Hilberts students were Hermann Weyl, chess champion Emanuel Lasker, Ernst Zermelo, john von Neumann was his assistant. At the University of Göttingen, Hilbert was surrounded by a circle of some of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, such as Emmy Noether. Between 1902 and 1939 Hilbert was editor of the Mathematische Annalen, good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician. Hilbert lived to see the Nazis purge many of the prominent faculty members at University of Göttingen in 1933 and those forced out included Hermann Weyl, Emmy Noether and Edmund Landau. One who had to leave Germany, Paul Bernays, had collaborated with Hilbert in mathematical logic and this was a sequel to the Hilbert-Ackermann book Principles of Mathematical Logic from 1928. Hermann Weyls successor was Helmut Hasse, about a year later, Hilbert attended a banquet and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust
10.
Arithmetic
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Arithmetic is a branch of mathematics that consists of the study of numbers, especially the properties of the traditional operations between them—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Arithmetic is an part of number theory, and number theory is considered to be one of the top-level divisions of modern mathematics, along with algebra, geometry. The terms arithmetic and higher arithmetic were used until the beginning of the 20th century as synonyms for number theory and are still used to refer to a wider part of number theory. The earliest written records indicate the Egyptians and Babylonians used all the elementary arithmetic operations as early as 2000 BC and these artifacts do not always reveal the specific process used for solving problems, but the characteristics of the particular numeral system strongly influence the complexity of the methods. The hieroglyphic system for Egyptian numerals, like the later Roman numerals, in both cases, this origin resulted in values that used a decimal base but did not include positional notation. Complex calculations with Roman numerals required the assistance of a board or the Roman abacus to obtain the results. Early number systems that included positional notation were not decimal, including the system for Babylonian numerals. Because of this concept, the ability to reuse the same digits for different values contributed to simpler. The continuous historical development of modern arithmetic starts with the Hellenistic civilization of ancient Greece, prior to the works of Euclid around 300 BC, Greek studies in mathematics overlapped with philosophical and mystical beliefs. For example, Nicomachus summarized the viewpoint of the earlier Pythagorean approach to numbers, Greek numerals were used by Archimedes, Diophantus and others in a positional notation not very different from ours. Because the ancient Greeks lacked a symbol for zero, they used three separate sets of symbols, one set for the units place, one for the tens place, and one for the hundreds. Then for the place they would reuse the symbols for the units place. Their addition algorithm was identical to ours, and their multiplication algorithm was very slightly different. Their long division algorithm was the same, and the square root algorithm that was taught in school was known to Archimedes. He preferred it to Heros method of successive approximation because, once computed, a digit doesnt change, and the square roots of perfect squares, such as 7485696, terminate immediately as 2736. For numbers with a part, such as 546.934. The ancient Chinese used a positional notation. Because they also lacked a symbol for zero, they had one set of symbols for the place
