Introduction to the Golden Age of Islamic Mathematics

I was very excited to see if there were similarities in this reading with the topic Jennah and I had done on Assignment 3 with our own Hindu mathematical research on the history of Brahmagupta. 

I wanted to first talk about Al-Kwarizmi as his book on The Addition and Subtraction According to the
Hindu Calculation which we also spoke about in our presentation was what introduced the numerical demical system into the Western world. The reading also mentioned that his book was later translated into Latin and this is what aided the spread of this knowledge to the rest of the world and why we use it today. In our own research, we also found out that Al-Kwarizmi was also the one to translate Brahmagupta's work and incorporated it into the same book. 

Secondly, I found ‛Umar al-Khayyāmī's work on the calendar reform and his book on the Explanation of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid interesting as he discussed the foundations in geometry that was later also translated into latin and influenced both J. Wallis and G. Saccheri’s work in the 17th century. The fact that he was referred to a poet rather than a mathematician also stood out to me. 

Thirdly, Al-Kāshī's strong emphasis on accuracy is what I found most interesting. When he was trying to measure the circumference of the universe he stated that true value that he would calculate should not be by more than the width of a horse’s hair from what the actual circumfrance value is. His lifes approach to being accurate with the use of ancient dimensions and methodologies to do this is an important lesson that could be incorporated into the classroom as students would be able to understand the resilience and pateince that mathematicians at the time took to be as accurate as they can and that they did not give up! 

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