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To the question: "What is the vector?" - usually answer: "This is a mathematical value that has a size and direction". Seeking to dispel such a common misconception and reveal the essence of the vector quantity, the well-known mechanic A. Minakov (1893-1954) gave an illustrative example in his lectures...

Number one underlies many concepts. The words "lonely", "loneliness" and "loner" all have the root "one", as well as "individual farmer", "single" - the root "one", "one". "Solo", a performance with the help of a single instrument, came from the Latin word "solus", which means "lonely"; from him, in turn, formed the words...

Number thirteen is divided into 2, 3, 4 and 6, which at a low level of calculations in antiquity gave a great advantage. But number thirteen caused some trouble, because it was not divided into anything. It also made difficulties in the calendar. For example, in Babylon the year contained 12 lunar months that comprised...

Gematria, or numerology, therefore fascinated the Hellenes, that in ancient Greece the numbers were represented by the letters of the alphabet and each number corresponded to a certain number. Comparing these numbers, corresponding to their names, comparing their properties, the Greeks established many curious dependencies, which continue to attract the attention of mathematicians to this day...

Mathematical symbols of all known decimal fractions was introduced by the famous Dutch S. Stevin, who in 1585 published in Leiden a small brochure "The Tenth". However, the method of symbolism he adopted was extremely inconvenient. So, the number 8,937 he wrote without a comma, enclosing every even number in the circle...

In mathematics, the number zero has a miraculous power. Without it there would not be a whole building of mathematics and there would not be a modern computer hardware. And to imagine a modern life without a computer is already as difficult as the fact that our ancestors once felt horror at the figure zero...