Concrete Devices
Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers. But long before abstractions like the number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts are implicit in concrete practices such as :
- one-to-one correspondence, a rule to count how many items, say on a tally stick, eventually abstracted into numbers;
- comparison to a standard, a method for assuming reproducibility in a measurement, for example, the number of coins;
- the 3-4-5 right triangle was a device for assuring a right angle, using ropes with 12 evenly spaced knots, for example.
Read more about this topic: History Of Computing
Famous quotes containing the words concrete and/or devices:
“A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist.... This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.”
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