The Greek, the Roman, and the Mathematics

The Greek and Their Mathematics

Most greek Mathematics are mainly about geometry. They do not believe in probability since

• They believe that chance is governed purely by Gods.
• Their number system is very difficult to work with. Algebra and arithematics had not existed in their time. They don’t even have the number zero nor fraction.

The Roman and the Half-Proofs

It is hard to prove a certain fact. It could be easier to break the fact into two independent parts, and proves each part independently. Clean and simple, isn't it? Well, this is probably why the Romans used it to prove innocence.

In the Roman time, a person can be condemned if witnesses testified against that person. The number of witnesses required to condemn a person varies according to the defendant's social status.

The idea behind this strategy is that two half-proofs make up a full proof. So, let's find 2 of half-proves, add them up, and get the full-proves. Suppose that each of half-proves can be in correct with probability of 0.5. When we add them up, the probability for the fact being correct is 1, right? Wrong!!

Well, to prove the fact, we need BOTH the halves to be correct. So the probability of the entire fact being correct is 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25, not 0.5 + 0.5 = 1.

Source: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow, Chapter 2 [Read the Book Review] [Read the Previous Part] [Read the Next Part].

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Book or Audiobooks?

Personally, I prefer audiobooks. It's fun, and I can listen when I'm doing something else. It also makes other activities (e.g., jogging) a lot more fun. For more detail about audiobooks, please read [this post].

There is one more reason that may encourage you to go for the audiobook version. You can get it now for FREE. Audible offers you a free trial for 14 days. Even if you get the book and cancel the subscription right away (so that you don't have to pay), you can keep the book. And, don't worry if you lost the audiobook file. Just log into audible.com. You can keep downloading the over and over again.


About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.