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What is Mathematics By Clement Ng What is mathematics? If you ask this question of the first person you meet on the street you will most likely hear that "Mathematics is the study of number." If you insist that your respondent be more specific, you may elicit the suggestion that mathematics is "The Science of number." But that is about as far as you will get, and it is not an adequate description of mathematics. It is out of date by 2500 years! The answer to the question "What is Mathematics?" has changed several since then. Until around 500 BC, mathematics was indeed about numbers. Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, and Chinese mathematics consisted almost solely of arithmetic. It was largely utilitarian and very much of a "cookbook" variety. ("Do such and such to a number and you will get the answer.") Between 500BC and AD300, Mathematics expanded beyond the study of number. The mathematicians of...

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