Early Chinese Mathematics

Introduction

Mathematics is an important Chinese ancient science disciplines, it has a long history and brilliant achievements. According to the characteristics of its own development, it can be divided into five stages: 1) ancient Chinese mathematics bud; 2) the formation of the Chinese ancient mathematical system; 3) the ancient Chinese mathematics; 4) ancient Chinese mathematics prosperity; 5) The Western mathematics integration. The earliest still existing mathematical artifacts from China is coming from the era of the Shang (1600 BC-1046 BC) tortoiseshell with stored numbers 123rd Is used the decimal system, from top to bottom was scratched: number one, symbol of the hundreds, number 2, the symbol of the decade, the number 3 At that time it was the most advanced number system in the world. Later the Chinese hoped to devices such as suanpan and Chinese abacus. It is not known exactly when the lore was invented; the earliest mention is in the Appendix to the art of figures Xu Yue from the year 190 AD. The oldest Chinese work with references to geometry, which survived burning books, Mo Jing, comes from the philosophical canon and was written around 330 BC. She described various aspects of physics, on the occasion of a discussion of mathematical methods (Eves, 1990).

Mathematics in Ancient China

With the accession of the dynasty of Han, ancient knowledge has to recover and develop. In II.BC published in the most ancient extant writings - Mathematics and Astronomy "Treatise on the measuring pole" and the fundamental work of “Mathematics in nine books. Figures show the special characters that appeared in the II millennium BC, and mark them permanently established in the III. BC. These characters are used in the present. The Chinese way of writing numbers was originally multiplicative. For example, a record number of 1946, using Roman numerals rather than characters, can be conventionally represented as 1M9S4H6. However, in practice, calculations were made ??on the score board suanpan, where a record number was different - positional, as in India, and, unlike the Babylonians, the decimal. Chinese counting board in their construction is similar to Russian accounts. Brand new, first designated an empty place, a special character appeared around the XII century. To memorize the multiplication table there was a special song that pupils learned by heart (Katz, 2007).

The prestige of mathematics in China was high. Every officer to be appointed to the post, rented, among others, and an ...