I was always impressed reading Pepys diary by the very low level of mathematical education he needed to graduate Cambridge. He later decided he wanted to learn "Mathematiques". By which he meant multiplication and division!
7-4-1662
Entry from Samuel Pepys' diary.: "By and by comes Mr. Cooper ... of whom I entend to learn Mathematiques; and so we begin with him today .... After an hour's being with him at Arithmetique, my first attempt being to learn the Multiplication table, then we parted till tomorrow." At the time Pepys held a position akin to a modern Secretary of the Navy.
Yeah, the biggest hurdle I have in trying to understand older math stuff is just the sheer difficulty in how things were expressed back then... while math isn't just the manipulation of arbitrary symbols and notation... they help so so so much in conveying meaning... at least for the simple operations we're familiar with... at some point it swings back the other way and the symbols have to be translated back to thought and that's also where I get stuck in Real Math =\
I was always impressed reading Pepys diary by the very low level of mathematical education he needed to graduate Cambridge. He later decided he wanted to learn "Mathematiques". By which he meant multiplication and division!
7-4-1662
Entry from Samuel Pepys' diary.: "By and by comes Mr. Cooper ... of whom I entend to learn Mathematiques; and so we begin with him today .... After an hour's being with him at Arithmetique, my first attempt being to learn the Multiplication table, then we parted till tomorrow." At the time Pepys held a position akin to a modern Secretary of the Navy.
Yeah, the biggest hurdle I have in trying to understand older math stuff is just the sheer difficulty in how things were expressed back then... while math isn't just the manipulation of arbitrary symbols and notation... they help so so so much in conveying meaning... at least for the simple operations we're familiar with... at some point it swings back the other way and the symbols have to be translated back to thought and that's also where I get stuck in Real Math =\