The word "mathematics" comes from the Greek

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Mathematics Education
Mathematics and Mathematicians (1)
MATHEMATICS
The word "mathematics" comes from the Greek
µ???µa (máthema) which means "science,
knowledge, or learning" µa??µat????
(mathematikós) means fond of learning". Some
non-Greek equivalents of the word Mathematics
Ganit (ul0ft) , Chinese? Arabian ?
WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?
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- WIKIPEDIA, The Free Encyclopedia
Mathematics Education
Mathematics and Mathematicians(2)
MATHEMATICS
WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?

• Mathematics, often abbreviated maths (British
  English) or math (American English), is
  the investigation of axiomatically defined
  abstract structures using symbolic logic and
  mathematical notation. It is commonly
  defined as the study of patterns of structure,
  change, and space even more informally, one
  might say it is the study of "figures and
  numbers". Some hold that since it is not
  empirical, it is not a science.

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Helplessness!
Mathematics Education
Mathematics and Mathematicians(3)

• Some evasive remarks
• Mathematics is what mathematicians do
• Mathematics is a Hydra-headed subject
• having many facets

WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?
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Mathematics and Mathematicians(4)
Mathematics Education
Uninteresting and Embarrassing Subject

• Mathematicians are human beings, and most of the
  things they do are uninteresting and some,
  embarrassing to relate

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Mathematics and Mathematicians(5)
Mathematics Education
Student versus Math Teacher
Is it right, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore
thyself and bore the students?
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Mathematics and Mathematicians(6)
Mathematics Education
WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?
Mathematics is a language, a particular
kind of logical structure, a body of knowledge
about number and space, a series of methods for
deriving conclusions, the essence of our
knowledge of the physical world, or merely an
amusing intellectual activity. Morris
Kline
The great book of nature can be read only by
those who know the language in which it
was written. And this language is mathematics.


Galileo
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Mathematics and Mathematicians(6)
Mathematics Education
WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?
Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the
lock of the physical universe.



Polkinhorne
C F G a u s s
Albert Einstein referred to the subject as the
Queen of the Sciences (a phrase first used by
Carl Friedrich Gauss).
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Mathematics and Mathematicians(7)
Mathematics Education

WHAT IS MATHEMATICS ?
Mathematics, like art, like music and literature,
and like life itself, has the power to make us
happy by means of our personal creativity
and openness, and through our own personal
resolution of what is decidable and what
is undecidable, not only in mathematics
education but in life itself.




Dr. Alan Rogerson
Experience, however, shows that for the
majority of the cultured, even of scientists,
mathematics remains the science of the
incomprehensible .
.
Alfred Pringsheim
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Mathematics Education
Mathematics and Mathematicians(8)
Some Great Mathematicians
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END OF PART ONE
1.2 Mathematics and Mathematicians