Vedic Mathematics: My Trip to India to Uncover the Truth - Alex Bellos (2011)

by MulaiAzhagi Sat Jan 07, 2012 12:22 pm

http://www.cosmolearning.com/videos/vedic-mathematics-my-trip-to-india-to-uncover-the-truth-alex-bellos-2011-1498/

by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Jan 07, 2012 12:33 pm

haven't watched your video yet but most vedic "mathematics" seems to be about arithmetic tricks and not serious mathematics at all. if you expand that to the mathematics of ancient indians there is plenty of serious mathematics that went on. in fact many early concepts of trigonometry and calculus were discovered by the kerala school (i've posted about that here) of mathematicians millenia before the birth of newton and leibnitz.

by .|Sublime|. Sat Jan 07, 2012 2:12 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:haven't watched your video yet but most vedic "mathematics" seems to be about arithmetic tricks and not serious mathematics at all. if you expand that to the mathematics of ancient indians there is plenty of serious mathematics that went on. in fact many early concepts of trigonometry and calculus were discovered by the kerala school (i've posted about that here) of mathematicians millenia before the birth of newton and leibnitz.

I have to agree that vedic mathematics and for that matter any form of speed maths is not as serious as say calculus. Rather, in my view, vedic/speed mathematics is a creative way to explore mathematics. It enables non-intuitive thinking. It is always more interesting when you delve deeper into the mechanics of the technique and try to decipher why it works.

Warning: now is the time to move out of this post if you are not interested in a lecture!

For example: take Trachtenberg's x 11 method (a very simple example)
Look at how x 11 is done in the traditional method of multiplication when we write the two factors one below the other and multiply digit by digit in 3 steps (2 multplications and 1 addition).
When you look at the columns from left to right you realize why this technique works.

Another example: A popular sutra - Ekadhikena Purvena
Brilliantly simple in execution but how does this work?
For multiplying two numbers whose first digits are the same and last digits add to 10 can be written as
(10a + b) (10a + 10 - b) where a and b are the digits
On expanding and simplifying it works out to be 100a(a+1) + b(10-b)
which is the first digit multiplied by one more than the digit in the 100s place + product of the last digits
22 x 28 = 100(2x3)+(2x8) = 600 + 16 = 616
104 x 106 = 100(10+11) + (6x4) = 11024

Not all the sutras or techniques are this simple to decode but there is definitely a lot of thinking that has gone into making a computation simple. I say, just enjoy it and have fun with it.

by artood2 Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:34 am

Anybody who seems apologetic over indian mathematics just does not know enough about the contirbutions of Indian mathematician. any easy to apply rule does have its place in the system.

by charvaka Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:46 am

artood2 wrote:Anybody who seems apologetic over indian mathematics just does not know enough about the contirbutions of Indian mathematician. any easy to apply rule does have its place in the system.

Easy to apply rules now seem trivial to us, thanks to electronic calculators and computers. Back in the day when we didn't have such help, arithmetic tricks touted as vedic math were quite useful. But I agree with Max's broader point -- that much more important and path-breaking math took place in India than those tricks.

by Merlot Daruwala Mon Jan 09, 2012 8:57 am

charvaka wrote:
artood2 wrote:Anybody who seems apologetic over indian mathematics just does not know enough about the contirbutions of Indian mathematician. any easy to apply rule does have its place in the system.
Easy to apply rules now seem trivial to us, thanks to electronic calculators and computers. Back in the day when we didn't have such help, arithmetic tricks touted as vedic math were quite useful. But I agree with Max's broader point -- that much more important and path-breaking math took place in India than those tricks.

And importantly, those pathbreaking developments have a solid provenance in terms of manuscripts etc.

On the other hand, all these arithmetic tricks floating under the banner of "vedic" mathematics can be traced to one single text authored by a Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha, published posthumously in the 60s.

He claims he got it all from some sutras in the Atharva Veda, but till date, nobody has been able to find any such references. It's sad but highly likely that the man sought to attribute his own very creative and extremely innovative work to some older text in the time-honored Indian tradition.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:12 am

reposting a link that carvaka posted a while ago: http://www.canisius.edu/topos/rajeev.asp

prof rajeev's slides are very interesting to read. the mathematics is very absorbing, but so also the info about caste system in kerala, and the life of the namboothiri priest scholar.

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Vedic Mathematics: My Trip to India to Uncover the Truth - Alex Bellos (2011)

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