Yang hui mathematician biography rubric

The thirteenth century was perhaps the most significant period in the histroy of Chinese mathematics. Of the works of these four great Chinese mathematicians, those by Yang Hui have, until very recently, been the least studied and analyzed. Nothing is known about the life of Yang Hui, except that he produced mathematical writings. Yang Hui also names as his teacher another mathematician, Liu 1, a native Chung—shan, of whom nothing is known.

According tot he preace written by Yang Hui, he had seselected 80 of the problems in the Chirr—chang suan—shit for detailed discussion. This book is no longer extant. Some sections have, however, been restored by Li Yen from the chia suan—fa in the Yujng—lo ta—tien encyclopedia. The book seems to be quite elementary. A handwritten copy of the Korean reprint was made by the seventeenth—century Japanese mathematician Seki Takakazu.

A copy of the Korean reprint is in the Peking National Library.

It focuses on the works of Yang Hui, a 13th century mathematician, including his revisions to The Nine Chapters and his development of magic squares and circles.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Mao Chin made a handwriten copy of the fourteenth—century edition of the Yang Hui suan—fa. Problems of the same nature also are compared with eacy other. In the last chapter, the T suan lei, Yang Hui reclassifies all the problems in the Chiu—chang suanshu in order of progressive difficulty, for the benefit of students of mathematics.

Some examples of algbraic series given by Yang Hui in this book are. The number is set up in the second row of a counting board in which five rows are used—the top row shang is for the constant, the third row fang is for the coefficient of x, and the last row lien is for th ecoefficient of x 2 , and the fourth row hsia—fa is for the coefficient of x 3.