What is Math?

What is math? When I first read the question I thought, "Well duh. Math is ..." Then I stopped. I realize that the question is not nearly as simple as it sounds. I first started off by thinking that it was the study of numbers. That is only one component of math. Math includes a lot more than that and a lot more than most people think. Looking back on my four years here at Grand Valley, I realize that I have studied many components of math and there are still many that I have yet to come across. So to me, math is not just one topic. It is a bunch of components ranging anywhere from algebra to geometry, trig to calculus, and from numbers to everything in between. I also believe that math is not just simply doing whatever these components ask of you to do but more importantly proving the existent of them.

There are so many important discovers to happen within mathematics that it is difficult to pick the top discoveries. A lot of discoveries are important to different areas of math. This makes it hard to rank any of them in level of importance. In my opinion, some of the top discoveries include

• Calculus
• Pythagorean Theorem
• Fibonacci
• Non-Euclidean Geometry
• Algebra

I feel like out of these five discoveries, algebra is the most important. I believe this because algebra is the foundation for all of the other discoveries. For examples, without algebra we would not have calculus. If you talk to other people, they would most likely believe that calculus is an important discovery. Thanks to algebra, this discovery could happen.