Importance of zero in todays life
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Zero is possibly one of the most important discoveries of all time, before its discovery people rarely used numbers for anything beyond counting and so zero was not really required, you either had a number of sheep or none.
However there were problems, the greeks had discovered polynomials that had two answers a normal answer (what we'd call positive today) and a nonsense one ( what we'd call negative today) however they couldn't make sense of this until the invention of zero after all without a zero how can you have the idea of negative numbers.
Zero opened the way for more abstract ideas such as negative numbers, these let us solve geometric problems that would be impossible without negative numbers and zero. Without these numbers modern physics would be impossible there would be no theory of gravity as this requires negative potential energy, there would be no theories of movement as you need momentum calculations. Lending by banks to start businesses would be impossible without modern risk management relying on the sort of complex mathematics derived from the concept of zero.
Later on the concept of zero allowed modern mathematicians to think abstractly enough to develop the idea of "imaginary" numbers (the square roots of a negative number) finally leading to the ability to solve complex equations like the ones developed by the greeks which started this search for new numbers off in the first place, this led to the ability to solve problems much more efficiently leading to among other things modern understanding of electronics and hence the modern computer.
However there were problems, the greeks had discovered polynomials that had two answers a normal answer (what we'd call positive today) and a nonsense one ( what we'd call negative today) however they couldn't make sense of this until the invention of zero after all without a zero how can you have the idea of negative numbers.
Zero opened the way for more abstract ideas such as negative numbers, these let us solve geometric problems that would be impossible without negative numbers and zero. Without these numbers modern physics would be impossible there would be no theory of gravity as this requires negative potential energy, there would be no theories of movement as you need momentum calculations. Lending by banks to start businesses would be impossible without modern risk management relying on the sort of complex mathematics derived from the concept of zero.
Later on the concept of zero allowed modern mathematicians to think abstractly enough to develop the idea of "imaginary" numbers (the square roots of a negative number) finally leading to the ability to solve complex equations like the ones developed by the greeks which started this search for new numbers off in the first place, this led to the ability to solve problems much more efficiently leading to among other things modern understanding of electronics and hence the modern computer.
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