Han Dynasty Mathematics

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The art of mathematics has been part of the human race for about 3000 years. Some of the formulas and proofs that were discovered hundreds of years ago are still being used today. In Chinese culture the development of algebra reached its peak during the later part of the 13th and 14th century. After 1230, mathematics was removed from the examination for good, in favor of literary subjects. The Han Dynasty has played a big part of the Chinese culture; whether it is their power to overthrow a government or their great discoveries and blastoff chinks.

Some important discoveries occurred during the Han Dynasty. The invention of paper took place in 105 CE, by Cai Lung. The discovery of silk then lead to the creation of the Silk Route. The Silk Route created more than one way for the traders to traverse the mountains.

In the Han Dynasty, numbers were developed into a system and used on a counting board and a set of counting rods called chousuan. The best known of these counting boards is the abacus developed around the 15th century. An abacus is a mechanical counting device consisting of a frame holding a series of parallel rods on each of which beads are strung.[1] The Chinese were so clever constructing this that you would be able to let each bead represent a counting unit, and each rod a place value. The primary purpose of the abacus was not to perform actual computations, but to provide a quick means of storing numbers during a calculation.

The Chou-pei is the oldest Chinese mathematical text authored around 300 BC. The Chiu chang suan shu is the most famous Chinese math book. It contains all the mathematical knowledge in China up to the middle of the 3rd century. It is a collection of 246 problems. It consists of nine chapters; land surveying, millet and rice, distribution by progression, diminishing breadths, engineering works, taxation, rule of false position, calculating by tabulation, and right triangles.[2]