Summary: This is a designed lesson for English for students of Mathematics

The word mathematics comes from the Greek mathemata, which means things that are
learned. It may seem odd to aly this hrase to a single field of knowledge, !ut we should
oint out that for the ancient Greeks, mathematics included not only the study of num!ers and
sace !ut also astronomy and music. "owadays, of course, we do not think of astronomy and
music as mathematical su!#ects$ yet the scoe of mathematics today is !roader than e%er.
Modern mathematics is a %ast field of knowledge with many su!di%isions. There is, first of
all, the mathematics of num!ers, or &uantity. The !ranch of arithmetic deals with articular
num!ers, such as ', or ()(*+ or (+.,. -hen we add, su!tract, multily, or di%ide such
num!ers or get their s&uare roots or s&uares, we are engaging in arithmetical oerations.
Sometimes we wish to consider, not articular num!ers, !ut relationshis that will aly to
whole grous of num!ers. -e study such relationshis in alge!ra, another !ranch of the
science of &uantity. In alge!ra, a sym!ol, such as the letter a or !, stands for an entire class of
num!ers. .or e/amle, in the formula: 0a1+2+ 3 a+ 1 4a 1 4, the letter a reresents any
num!er. The relationshi which is e/ressed in the formula remains the same whether a
stands for (, or ,, or (), or any num!er.
Mathematics also studies shaes in sace, which may !e thought of as a world of oints,
surfaces, and solids. -e study the roerties of different shaes and the relations !etween
them, and we learn how to measure them. This sace science is called geometry. 5lane
geometry is concerned with oints, lines, figures in a single lane 6 a surface with only two
dimensions. The study of the three7dimensional world is called solid geometry. Trigonometry
0triangle measurement2 is an offshoot of geometry. It is !ased on the fact that when certain
arts of triangles are known, one can determine the remaining arts and sol%e many different
ro!lems.
8nalytic geometry com!ines alge!ra and geometry 6 generali9ed num!ers and sace
relationshis. It locates geometrical figures in sace. It e/lains circles, ellises, and other
figures in terms of alge!raic formulas.
The !ranch of mathematics called calculus is !ased on the study of functions. If the %alue of a
gi%en &uantity deends on the %alue we assign to a second &uantity, we say that the first
&uantity is a function of the second. In integral calculus, we are interested in the limit of the
different %alues of a %aria!le function. In differential calculus, we determine the rate of
change of a %aria!le function.
Statistics, another !ranch of mathematics, in%ol%es the accumulation and ta!ulation of data
which are e/ressed in &uantities, and the setting u of general laws which are !ased on such
data. The theory of ro!a!ility ena!les one to calculate the chances that certain e%ents will
occur 6 such as the ,) ercent chance that a coin toss will roduce heads. In the social
sciences, ro!a!ility can !e used to redict the num!er of !oys and girls that will !e !orn in a
articular lace at a articular time.
These are only a few of the many su!di%isions of mathematics. :esides !eing the most
e/tensi%e field of knowledge in its own right, it reresents a logical aroach that can !e
alied to many different fields. It carefully defines the ideas that are to !e discussed and
clearly states the assumtions that can !e made. Then on the !asis of !oth the definitions and
the assumtions, it forges a chain of roofs, each link in the chain is as strong as any other.
Mathematicians ha%e dislayed wonderful owers of imagination in determining what can !e
ro%ed and in constructing ingenious methods of roof.
0Te/t e/tracted from The new !ook of oular sciences selected !y Grothier2