Sunday, March 01, 2020

Zero: The Biography of A Dangerous Idea

In Zero, Math journalist Charles Seife explores the concept of "0" and at the end brings in zero's cousin, infinity. Many ancient cultures did not have the concept of zero. The led to numerical systems like Roman numerals. It also resulted in odd year number. (1BC is followed immediately by 1 AD). Zero helped unlock new abilities in math, and made writing numbers easier. The author also explores Pythagoreans and their problems with irrational numbers (such as the square root of 2 that pops up in the pythagorean therom.) He mentions incidents where division by zero caused great calamities. Zero also opened the door the calculus and the concept of limits that approach zero (or infinity) Towards the end, the author spends a lot of time delving into worm holes and theoretical physics.

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