How does one “invent new maths”? Like Isaac Newton inventing Calculus, or John Napier logs. How does one answer a mathematical question that’s never been answered?

692 views

How does one “invent new maths”? Like Isaac Newton inventing Calculus, or John Napier logs. How does one answer a mathematical question that’s never been answered?

In: Mathematics

29 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

* Numbers are just representations of data. There’s 1, or 2 oranges.
* Math is just the manipulation of that data. John has 2 oranges + 3 oranges
* Inventing new maths, is just figuring out **how to manipulate** that data to solve a **specific question, or type of question**. How many oranges does John have? 2+3=5!

You could say that the question has never been answered before, or you could also say the question has never been asked **properly** before. It’s never been broken down to smaller parts we can easily understand.

Like… how big is a triangle (for simplicity we’ll use a Right Angle Triangle)? How do I calculate all that area inside of it? Well I don’t know… but there must be some way to find out. So let’s see what makes up a triangle, break it down to simple parts we can already measure, parts we can use as data.

Well… we can measure the base of it, we can also measure the height, so we have that data. But now what?

Hm… well you know what’s interesting that **I** noticed? If I take another triangle of the exact same size, I turn it and put the two together, I’ve made a square! That’s kind of neat, and it happens every time.

It’s easy to calculate the area of a square… So to figure out how big a Right Angle Triangle is, I actually just need to make that a square and chop it in half. I just invented new math!

So the math for how big a triangle is, is ((The **B**ase times the **H**eight) divided by **2**). So the question for how big a triangle is, more specifically is what is ((BxH)/2)?

You can now use this new math, we’ll call it **Remote-Waste’s Amazing Triangle Triumph**, and you can praise me as the smartest person ever.

You are viewing 1 out of 29 answers, click here to view all answers.