Mathematics (from Greek μάθημα máthēma"knowledge, study, learning") is the study ofquantity, structure, space, and change.[2]Mathematicians seek out patterns[3][4] and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures bymathematical proof. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry. Since the pioneering work of Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932), David Hilbert (1862-1943), and others on axiomatic systems in the late 19th century, it has become customary to view mathematical research as establishing truth by rigorousdeduction from appropriately chosen axiomsand definitions. When those mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning often provides insight or predictions.
Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics developed fromcounting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motionsof physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity for as far back aswritten records exist. Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Mathematics developed at a relatively slow pace until theRenaissance, when mathematical innovations interacting with new scientific discoveries led to a rapid increase in the rate of mathematical discovery that continues to the present day.[5]
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) said, 'The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. 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'.[6] Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences".[7] Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880) called mathematics "the science that draws necessary conclusions".[8] 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."[9] Albert Einstein (1879-1955) stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality".[10]
Mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, includingnatural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics and game theory. 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, and practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered.[11]
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Etymology
The word "mathematics" comes from the Greek μάθημα (máthēma), which means in ancient Greek what one learns, what one gets to know, hence also study and science, and in modern Greek just lesson.
The word máthēma comes from μανθάνω (manthano) in ancient Greek and from μαθαίνω (mathaino) in modern Greek, both of which mean to learn.
The word "mathematics" in Greek came to have the narrower and more technical meaning "mathematical study", even in Classical times.[12] Its adjective is μαθηματικός(mathēmatikós), meaning related to learning or studious, which likewise further came to mean mathematical. In particular, μαθηματικὴ τέχνη (mathēmatikḗ tékhnē), Latin: ars mathematica, meant the mathematical art. In Latin, and in English until around 1700, the term "mathematics" more commonly meant "astrology" (or sometimes "astronomy") rather than "mathematics"; the meaning gradually changed to its present one from about 1500 to 1800. This has resulted in several mistranslations: a particularly notorious one is Saint Augustine's warning that Christians should beware of "mathematici" meaning astrologers, which is sometimes mistranslated as a condemnation of mathematicians.
The apparent plural form in English, like the French plural form les mathématiques (and the less commonly used singular derivative la mathématique), goes back to the Latin neuter plural mathematica (Cicero), based on the Greek plural τα μαθηματικά (ta mathēmatiká), used by Aristotle (384-322BC), and meaning roughly "all things mathematical"; although it is plausible that English borrowed only the adjectivemathematic(al) and formed the noun mathematics anew, after the pattern of physics andmetaphysics, which were inherited from the Greek.[13] In English, the noun mathematicstakes singular verb forms. It is often shortened to maths or, in English-speaking North America, math.
History
Main article: History of mathematics
The evolution of mathematics might be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions, or alternatively an expansion of subject matter. The first abstraction, which is shared by many animals,[14] was probably that ofnumbers: the realization that a collection of two apples and a collection of two oranges (for example) have something in common, namely quantity of their members.
In addition to recognizing how to count physical objects,prehistoric peoples also recognized how to countabstract quantities, like time – days, seasons, years.[15]Elementary arithmetic (addition, subtraction,multiplication and division) naturally followed.
Since numeracy pre-dated writing, further steps were needed for recording numbers such as tallies or the knotted strings called quipu used by the Inca to store numerical data.[citation needed] Numeral systems have been many and diverse, with the first known written numerals created by Egyptians in Middle Kingdom texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.[citation needed]
The earliest uses of mathematics were intrading, land measurement, painting andweaving patterns and the recording of time. More complex mathematics did not appear until around 3000 BC, when the Babylonians and Egyptians began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for taxation and other financial calculations, for building and construction, and for astronomy.[16] The systematic study of mathematics in its own right began with theAncient Greeks between 600 and 300 BC.[17]
Mathematics has since been greatly extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today. According to Mikhail B. Sevryuk, in the January 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, "The number of papers and books included in the Mathematical Reviews database since 1940 (the first year of operation of MR) is now more than 1.9 million, and more than 75 thousand items are added to the database each year. The overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs."[18]
Inspiration, pure and applied mathematics, and aesthetics
Main article: Mathematical beauty
Mathematics arises from many different kinds of problems. At first these were found in commerce, land measurement, architecture and later astronomy; nowadays, all sciences suggest problems studied by mathematicians, and many problems arise within mathematics itself. For example, the physicist Richard Feynman invented the path integral formulation ofquantum mechanics using a combination of mathematical reasoning and physical insight, and today's string theory, a still-developing scientific theory which attempts to unify the four fundamental forces of nature, continues to inspire new mathematics.[19] Some mathematics is only relevant in the area that inspired it, and is applied to solve further problems in that area. But often mathematics inspired by one area proves useful in many areas, and joins the general stock of mathematical concepts. A distinction is often made between pure mathematics and applied mathematics. However pure mathematics topics often turn out to have applications, e.g. number theory in cryptography. This remarkable fact that even the "purest" mathematics often turns out to have practical applications is what Eugene Wignerhas called "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics".[20] As in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific age has led to specialization: there are now hundreds of specialized areas in mathematics and the latest Mathematics Subject Classification runs to 46 pages.[21] Several areas of applied mathematics have merged with related traditions outside of mathematics and become disciplines in their own right, including statistics, operations research, and computer science.
For those who are mathematically inclined, there is often a definite aesthetic aspect to much of mathematics. Many mathematicians talk about the elegance of mathematics, its intrinsic aesthetics and inner beauty. Simplicity and generality are valued. There is beauty in a simple and elegant proof, such as Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers, and in an elegant numerical method that speeds calculation, such as the fast Fourier transform. G. H. Hardy in A Mathematician's Apology expressed the belief that these aesthetic considerations are, in themselves, sufficient to justify the study of pure mathematics. He identified criteria such as significance, unexpectedness, inevitability, and economy as factors that contribute to a mathematical aesthetic.[22] Mathematicians often strive to find proofs that are particularly elegant, proofs from "The Book" of God according to Paul Erdős.[23][24] The popularity of recreational mathematics is another sign of the pleasure many find in solving mathematical questions.
Notation, language, and rigor
Main article: Mathematical notation
Most of the mathematical notation in use today was not invented until the 16th century.[25] Before that, mathematics was written out in words, a painstaking process that limited mathematical discovery.[26] Euler(1707–1783) was responsible for many of the notations in use today. Modern notation makes mathematics much easier for the professional, but beginners often find it daunting. It is extremely compressed: a few symbols contain a great deal of information. Like musical notation, modern mathematical notation has a strict syntax (which to a limited extent varies from author to author and from discipline to discipline) and encodes information that would be difficult to write in any other way.
Mathematical language can be difficult to understand for beginners. Words such as or and only have more precise meanings than in everyday speech. Moreover, words such as open and field have been given specialized mathematical meanings. Technical terms such as homeomorphismand integrable have precise meanings in mathematics. Additionally, shorthand phrases such as "iff" for "if and only if" belong to mathematical jargon. There is a reason for special notation and technical vocabulary: mathematics requires more precision than everyday speech. Mathematicians refer to this precision of language and logic as "rigor".
Mathematical proof is fundamentally a matter of rigor. Mathematicians want their theorems to follow from axioms by means of systematic reasoning. This is to avoid mistaken "theorems", based on fallible intuitions, of which many instances have occurred in the history of the subject.[27] The level of rigor expected in mathematics has varied over time: the Greeks expected detailed arguments, but at the time of Isaac Newton the methods employed were less rigorous. Problems inherent in the definitions used by Newton would lead to a resurgence of careful analysis and formal proof in the 19th century. Misunderstanding the rigor is a cause for some of the common misconceptions of mathematics. Today, mathematicians continue to argue among themselves aboutcomputer-assisted proofs. Since large computations are hard to verify, such proofs may not be sufficiently rigorous.[28]
Axioms in traditional thought were "self-evident truths", but that conception is problematic. At a formal level, an axiom is just a string of symbols, which has an intrinsic meaning only in the context of all derivable formulas of an axiomatic system. It was the goal of Hilbert's program to put all of mathematics on a firm axiomatic basis, but according to Gödel's incompleteness theorem every (sufficiently powerful) axiomatic system has undecidableformulas; and so a final axiomatization of mathematics is impossible. Nonetheless mathematics is often imagined to be (as far as its formal content) nothing but set theory in some axiomatization, in the sense that every mathematical statement or proof could be cast into formulas within set theory.[29]
Fields of mathematics
See also: Areas of mathematics
See also: Glossary of areas of mathematics
Mathematics can, broadly speaking, be subdivided into the study of quantity, structure, space, and change (i.e. arithmetic, algebra,geometry, and analysis). In addition to these main concerns, there are also subdivisions dedicated to exploring links from the heart of mathematics to other fields: to logic, to set theory (foundations), to the empirical mathematics of the various sciences (applied mathematics), and more recently to the rigorous study of uncertainty.
Foundations and philosophy
In order to clarify the foundations of mathematics, the fields of mathematical logic and set theory were developed. Mathematical logic includes the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics; set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets or collections of objects. Category theory, which deals in an abstract way with mathematical structures and relationships between them, is still in development. The phrase "crisis of foundations" describes the search for a rigorous foundation for mathematics that took place from approximately 1900 to 1930.[30] Some disagreement about the foundations of mathematics continues to the present day. The crisis of foundations was stimulated by a number of controversies at the time, including thecontroversy over Cantor's set theory and the Brouwer-Hilbert controversy.
Mathematical logic is concerned with setting mathematics within a rigorous axiomaticframework, and studying the implications of such a framework. As such, it is home toGödel's incompleteness theorems which (informally) imply that any formal system that contains basic arithmetic, if sound (meaning that all theorems that can be proven are true), is necessarily incomplete (meaning that there are true theorems which cannot be proved in that system). Whatever finite collection of number-theoretical axioms is taken as a foundation, Gödel showed how to construct a formal statement that is a true number-theoretical fact, but which does not follow from those axioms. Therefore no formal system is a complete axiomatization of full number theory. Modern logic is divided into recursion theory, model theory, and proof theory, and is closely linked to theoretical computer science[citation needed], as well as to Category Theory.
Theoretical computer science includes computability theory, computational complexity theory, and information theory. Computability theory examines the limitations of various theoretical models of the computer, including the most well known model – the Turing machine. Complexity theory is the study of tractability by computer; some problems, although theoretically solvable by computer, are so expensive in terms of time or space that solving them is likely to remain practically unfeasible, even with rapid advance of computer hardware. A famous problem is the "P=NP?" problem, one of the Millennium Prize Problems.[31] Finally, information theory is concerned with the amount of data that can be stored on a given medium, and hence deals with concepts such as compression andentropy.
Pure mathematics
Quantity
The study of quantity starts with numbers, first the familiar natural numbers and integers("whole numbers") and arithmetical operations on them, which are characterized inarithmetic. The deeper properties of integers are studied in number theory, from which come such popular results as Fermat's Last Theorem. The twin prime conjecture andGoldbach's conjecture are two unsolved problems in number theory.
As the number system is further developed, the integers are recognized as a subset of therational numbers ("fractions"). These, in turn, are contained within the real numbers, which are used to represent continuous quantities. Real numbers are generalized to complex numbers. These are the first steps of a hierarchy of numbers that goes on to includequarternions and octonions. Consideration of the natural numbers also leads to thetransfinite numbers, which formalize the concept of "infinity". Another area of study is size, which leads to the cardinal numbers and then to another conception of infinity: the aleph numbers, which allow meaningful comparison of the size of infinitely large sets.
Structure
Many mathematical objects, such as sets of numbers and functions, exhibit internal structure as a consequence of operations or relations that are defined on the set. Mathematics then studies properties of those sets that can be expressed in terms of that structure; for instance number theory studies properties of the set of integers that can be expressed in terms of arithmetic operations. Moreover, it frequently happens that different such structured sets (or structures) exhibit similar properties, which makes it possible, by a further step of abstraction, to state axioms for a class of structures, and then study at once the whole class of structures satisfying these axioms. Thus one can study groups, rings,fields and other abstract systems; together such studies (for structures defined by algebraic operations) constitute the domain of abstract algebra. By its great generality, abstract algebra can often be applied to seemingly unrelated problems; for instance a number of ancient problems concerning compass and straightedge constructions were finally solved using Galois theory, which involves field theory and group theory. Another example of an algebraic theory is linear algebra, which is the general study of vector spaces, whose elements called vectors have both quantity and direction, and can be used to model (relations between) points in space. This is one example of the phenomenon that the originally unrelated areas of geometry and algebra have very strong interactions in modern mathematics. Combinatorics studies ways of enumerating the number of objects that fit a given structure.
Space
The study of space originates with geometry – in particular, Euclidean geometry.Trigonometry is the branch of mathematics that deals with relationships between the sides and the angles of triangles and with the trigonometric functions; it combines space and numbers, and encompasses the well-known Pythagorean theorem. The modern study of space generalizes these ideas to include higher-dimensional geometry, non-Euclidean geometries (which play a central role in general relativity) and topology. Quantity and space both play a role in analytic geometry, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry.Convex and discrete geometry was developed to solve problems in number theory andfunctional analysis but now is pursued with an eye on applications in optimization andcomputer science. Within differential geometry are the concepts of fiber bundles and calculus on manifolds, in particular, vector and tensor calculus. Within algebraic geometry is the description of geometric objects as solution sets of polynomial equations, combining the concepts of quantity and space, and also the study of topological groups, which combine structure and space. Lie groups are used to study space, structure, and change.Topology in all its many ramifications may have been the greatest growth area in 20th century mathematics; it includes point-set topology, set-theoretic topology, algebraic topology and differential topology. In particular, instances of modern day topology aremetrizability theory, axiomatic set theory, homotopy theory, and Morse theory. Topology also includes the now solved Poincaré conjecture. Other results in geometry and topology, including the four color theorem and Kepler conjecture, have been proved only with the help of computers.
Change
Understanding and describing change is a common theme in the natural sciences, andcalculus was developed as a powerful tool to investigate it. Functions arise here, as a central concept describing a changing quantity. The rigorous study of real numbers and functions of a real variable is known as real analysis, with complex analysis the equivalent field for the complex numbers. Functional analysis focuses attention on (typically infinite-dimensional) spaces of functions. One of many applications of functional analysis isquantum mechanics. Many problems lead naturally to relationships between a quantity and its rate of change, and these are studied as differential equations. Many phenomena in nature can be described by dynamical systems; chaos theory makes precise the ways in which many of these systems exhibit unpredictable yet still deterministic behavior.
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| Calculus | Vector calculus | Differential equations | Dynamical systems | Chaos theory | Complex analysis |
Applied mathematics
Applied mathematics concerns itself with mathematical methods that are typically used in science, engineering, business, and industry. Thus, "applied mathematics" is amathematical science with specialized knowledge. The term "applied mathematics" also describes the professional specialty in which mathematicians work on practical problems; as a profession focused on practical problems, applied mathematics focuses on theformulation, study, and use of mathematical models in science, engineering, and other areas of mathematical practice.
In the past, practical applications have motivated the development of mathematical theories, which then became the subject of study in pure mathematics, where mathematics is developed primarily for its own sake. Thus, the activity of applied mathematics is vitally connected with research in pure mathematics.
Statistics and other decision sciences
Applied mathematics has significant overlap with the discipline of statistics, whose theory is formulated mathematically, especially with probability theory. Statisticians (working as part of a research project) "create data that makes sense" with random sampling and with randomized experiments;[32] the design of a statistical sample or experiment specifies the analysis of the data (before the data be available). When reconsidering data from experiments and samples or when analyzing data from observational studies, statisticians "make sense of the data" using the art of modelling and the theory of inference – withmodel selection and estimation; the estimated models and consequential predictionsshould be tested on new data.[33]
Statistical theory studies decision problems such as minimizing the risk (expected loss) of a statistical action, such as using a procedure in, for example, parameter estimation,hypothesis testing, and selecting the best. In these traditional areas of mathematical statistics, a statistical-decision problem is formulated by minimizing an objective function, like expected loss or cost, under specific constraints: For example, designing a survey often involves minimizing the cost of estimating a population mean with a given level of confidence.[34] Because of its use of optimization, the mathematical theory of statistics shares concerns with other decision sciences, such as operations research, control theory, and mathematical economics.[35]
Computational mathematics
Computational mathematics proposes and studies methods for solving mathematical problems that are typically too large for human numerical capacity. Numerical analysisstudies methods for problems in analysis using functional analysis and approximation theory; numerical analysis includes the study of approximation and discretization broadly with special concern for rounding errors. Numerical analysis and, more broadly, scientific computing also study non-analytic topics of mathematical science, especially algorithmicmatrix and graph theory. Other areas of computational mathematics include computer algebra and symbolic computation.
Mathematics as profession
Arguably the most prestigious award in mathematics is the Fields Medal,[36][37] established in 1936 and now awarded every 4 years. The Fields Medal is often considered a mathematical equivalent to the Nobel Prize.
The Wolf Prize in Mathematics, instituted in 1978, recognizes lifetime achievement, and another major international award, the Abel Prize, was introduced in 2003. The Chern Medal was introduced in 2010 to recognize lifetime achievement. These accolades are awarded in recognition of a particular body of work, which may be innovational, or provide a solution to an outstanding problem in an established field.
A famous list of 23 open problems, called "Hilbert's problems", was compiled in 1900 by German mathematician David Hilbert. This list achieved great celebrity among mathematicians, and at least nine of the problems have now been solved. A new list of seven important problems, titled the "Millennium Prize Problems", was published in 2000. Solution of each of these problems carries a $1 million reward, and only one (the Riemann hypothesis) is duplicated in Hilbert's problems.
Mathematics as science
Gauss referred to mathematics as "the Queen of the Sciences".[39] In the original Latin Regina Scientiarum, as well as in German Königin der Wissenschaften, the word corresponding to science means a "field of knowledge", and this was the original meaning of "science" in English, also. Of course, mathematics is in this sense a field of knowledge. The specialization restricting the meaning of "science" to natural sciencefollows the rise of Baconian science, which contrasted "natural science" to scholasticism, the Aristotelean method of inquiring from first principles. Of course, the role of empirical experimentation and observation is negligible in mathematics, compared to natural sciences such as psychology, biology, or physics. Albert Einsteinstated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."[10] More recently, Marcus du Sautoy has called mathematics 'the Queen of Science...the main driving force behind scientific discovery'.[40]
Many philosophers believe that mathematics is not experimentally falsifiable, and thus not a science according to the definition of Karl Popper.[41] However, in the 1930s Gödel's incompleteness theorems convinced many mathematicians[who?] that mathematics cannot be reduced to logic alone, and Karl Popper concluded that "most mathematical theories are, like those of physics and biology, hypothetico-deductive: pure mathematics therefore turns out to be much closer to the natural sciences whose hypotheses are conjectures, than it seemed even recently."[42] Other thinkers, notably Imre Lakatos, have applied a version of falsificationism to mathematics itself.
An alternative view is that certain scientific fields (such as theoretical physics) are mathematics with axioms that are intended to correspond to reality. In fact, the theoretical physicist, J. M. Ziman, proposed that science is public knowledge and thus includes mathematics.[43] In any case, mathematics shares much in common with many fields in the physical sciences, notably the exploration of the logical consequences of assumptions.Intuition and experimentation also play a role in the formulation of conjectures in both mathematics and the (other) sciences. Experimental mathematics continues to grow in importance within mathematics, and computation and simulation are playing an increasing role in both the sciences and mathematics, weakening the objection that mathematics does not use the scientific method.[citation needed]
The opinions of mathematicians on this matter are varied. Many mathematicians[who?] feel that to call their area a science is to downplay the importance of its aesthetic side, and its history in the traditional seven liberal arts; others[who?] feel that to ignore its connection to the sciences is to turn a blind eye to the fact that the interface between mathematics and its applications in science and engineering has driven much development in mathematics. One way this difference of viewpoint plays out is in the philosophical debate as to whether mathematics is created (as in art) or discovered (as in science). It is common to seeuniversities divided into sections that include a division of Science and Mathematics, indicating that the fields are seen as being allied but that they do not coincide. In practice, mathematicians are typically grouped with scientists at the gross level but separated at finer levels. This is one of many issues considered in the philosophy of mathematics.
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