I understand addition and subtraction and how civilization could utilize those (ex: I want 3 bananas, I am taking away 2 bananas, how many bananas are left, etc) but I’m struggling to find out why/how multiplication and division was discovered. TIA!
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I have twenty sheep, and I want to distribute them equally to my four sons. That’s division. Ten farmers have each harvested three bushels of millet. That’s multiplication.
I don’t understand what makes multiplication and division that much more unique than addition and subtraction. You divide rows of land evenly between workers. You divide food. You can estimate crop yields by counting a row and multiplying it. It’s incredibly useful and probably existed long before writing.
Thats a tough one.
We cant point to how it was discovered, but it was kinda around ever since humany began, we just didnt have a name for it, or an explanation.
The earliest known mention of a multiplication table was about 2000 BC, when a Babylon tutor got tired of explaining the shit, and started making clay tablets of multiplication tables.
Now, they used a base 60 system, so their math was kinda weird compared to ours today.
Aound 300 BC, a chinese tutor wrote down a base 10 multiplication table, the system we use today. Thats the first real example of our modern math we have.
It was invented, more recognized. If i have 2 apples, and 3 other people have 2 apples, our community has 6 apples to share. It predates any form of writting we have, and it wasnt until we transitioned from hunter-gathering to an agricultural society that people started to think, discover, and advance beyond basic survival
Its an interesting question. I think the way it could have been discovered is rooted in how we learn about it in elementary.
You got a pizza. The pizza is considered 1 whole thing. You got 3 friends. So you need to split the pizza among (ඞ) 4 people. So you devide 1/4 every one gets 1/4 of the pizza. If you got 2 whole pizzas for the 4 people everyone gets 2/4 so half a pizza.
Multiplication can be though of as repeatedly adding something. Like we got seven guys everyone should get 2 slices of bread so 2×7=14.
Mathematically you start with defining the numbers and two operations between them addition and multiplication. You start treating them as functions define their inverses and expand into the whole numbers and rationals. So the multipication wasn’t really discovered it was defined like addition. And the inverse of multiplication is division.
There are many real world use cases for multiplication.2 people have 5 cows.
how many cows? 2 x 5…
For division.
Hunters came back with 2 deer, we need to divide the 2 deer for the entire village.
I have one apple, and the two of us will share it. we each get half: division and fractions.
you have four oranges. if we share between us, we each get two.
if each of us grabs two pieces of firewood from this pile, the five of us will have ten pieces when we arrive at the kitchen/cooking area.
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