What is Math?

            Defining math is not an easy task. I think you could ask this question to one hundred people and receive one hundred different responses. When I was younger I would have said math is simply adding and subtracting. However, now I see math as something much more complex. It is a logical way of explaining everything in the world and you can find math everywhere you go. Everyone uses math on a day to day basis without realizing it. Additionally, math can be used to reason through problems we face.

Math has many big moments throughout history. I think math’s first big moments were when people started figuring out how to live their day to day lives. First, people used math when they found proportions for cooking meals, understanding distances between places, and counting items they needed. Although these people did not recognize it, they were using math. Slowly math became a bigger topic in history when mathematicians realized how it could be used to explain more aspects of the world. For example, Euclidean Geometry and Non Euclidean Geometry were discovered. Many theorems were discovered and accepted by people around the world. I think the history of math continues each day as people use what we have learned in the past to continue to explain the world around us. Defining math and exploring it’s biggest moments is difficult because math has evolved tremendously over time. It is hard to pick the top five moments.