Recently I encountered some fancy phone: the blackberry. It's got a colorful screen! Hmm let's see what apps it comes with. Ah, I found the calculator.
Each time I have my hand on a calculator, I TEST it!
-9, square root, will I get a generic E or "Error" spelled out?
5 / 0 =. Will I get a generic E or "Division by Zero!" error?
1 - 5 =. Will I get a negative sign in front, in the back, or the word "Minus"?
Ok, it gives me -Error-. Hmm, why does the square root called a "root"?
See, I understand why the unix superuser is called the root, as users decdend from it like a inverted tree... I understand why my ancestors can be referred to as my root... Why is the "radical" operation called "root"?
I decided to google around. I haven't found the answer yet. Ah, I found that the square root of 2 and 3 has a relationship with arctan and π! I have yet to understand the equations... (to be continued...)
I also found the following great discussion of the great mathematician Euler:
http://elearning.emath.pu.edu.tw/mkuo2003/2003mh/VII/18thold2/1894Leonhard%20Euler/eular.detail.htm
I left the google perference to Chinese page only.
If you survey people who are the greatest mathematicians, many will say "don't know" or "don't care". For those who do know, you may get people like Euclid, Newton, Archimedes. Euler should be among the list of the all-time greatest! (So do Gauss, Galois,... and more)
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