Math Is Fun Forum

Jai Ganesh

Administrator

Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 48,424

Mathematics Quiz # 1

1. This mathematician was found good for nothing in various spheres of life. Once on a journey he came across a mathematical problem which he eaily solved. It triggered off the mathematician in him. Who was he?
(a) Joseph Fourier  (b) Willard V.O. Quine  (c) John von Neumann  (d) Simeon Poisson

2. Who was responsible for intorducing the idea of 'proof' in mathematics?
(a) Democritus  (b) Leucippus  (c) Euclid  (d) Thales

3. Of the following mathematicians, tell who dreamed of reducing ethics, morality and law to mathematical calculation so that even a judge could perform some calculations to arrive at a just decision?
(a) G.W. Leibniz  (b) Pierre de Fermat  (c) Imre Lakatos 
(d) Nobody

4. Whose book The Laws of Thoughts became the basis of computer science?
(a) George Boole  (b) Niels Henrik Abel   (c) David Hilbert  (d) Kurt Godel

5. After fifteen years of fruitless thinking, when a mathematical discovery occured to him while he was walking on a bridge, he took out a penknife and scractched the discovery on the stone of the bridge. Who was he?
(a) Arthur Cayley  (b) William R. Hamilton  (c) George Peacock  (d) Evariste Galois

6. Of the following mathematicians, tell who was killed while he was solving a mathematical problem on sand?
(a) Euclid  (b) Archimedes  (c) Conon  (d) Apollonius

7. Of the following mathematicians, tell who wrote The laws of Verse?
(a) J.J. Sylvester  (b) Leopold Kronecker  (c) Augustin Cauchy 
(d) William R. Hamilton

8. Who is called 'the mathematicians' mathematician'?
(a) Arthur Cayley  (b) Niels Henrik Abel  (c) Lorenzo Mascheroni  (d) Rene Descartes

9. Which mathematician once said that he had never done anything useful in life - even his mathematical discoveries were not of any use to the world?
(a) J.E. Littlewood  (b) S. Ramanujan  (c) G.H. Hardy  (d) Simeon Poisson

10. One of the computer-builders and mathematicians was also a long-distance runner. Who was he?
(a)  Simon Gluck  (b)  Alan Turing  (c)  F. C. Williams (d)  Jack Kilby

11. Who introduced the multpilication sign 'x' in mathematics?
(a)  Augustus De Morgan  (b) William Oughtred  (c) John Wallis  (d) Henry Savile

12. Who said "....a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher"?
(a) Hermann Weyl  (b)  Betrand Russel  (c)  Norman Campbell 
(d) George Boole

13. Who invented the symbol n! for factorial of n?
(a) Christian Kramp  (b) Giordano Bruno  (c)  Francois Viete 
(d)  Simon Steven

14. Who gave the symbols'<' and '>'?
(a)  Thomas Harriot  (b)  Augustus de Morgan  (c)  William Oughtred  (d)  Richard Delamain

15.  The exponential e (≈ 2.7182818284) was conceived of by:
(a) Euclid  (b)  Leonhard Euler  (c)  Pierre de Fermat 
(d)  Augustus de Morgan

16. Who gave the symbol '='?
(a) Robert Recorde  (b)  Brahmagupta  (c)  Francois Viete
(d)  Anonymous

17.  He introduced 'ellipse', 'parabola' and 'hyperbola' to geometry. Who is he?
(a)  Apollonius  (b)  Pappus  (c) Menelaus   (d) Claudius Ptolemy

18. Who coined the term 'Artificial Intelligence' for the mathematics-based subject meant to copy human intelligence?
(a)  John McCarthy  (b)  Marvin Minowski  (c)  Alan Turing 
(d) William Shockley

19.  Who remarked, "One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoveries, that we must get more out of them than was originally put into them"?
(a)  Heinrich Hertz  (b)  James Clerk Maxwell  (c)  Georg Cantor   
(d)  Albert Einstein

20.  What is employed to assess whether a mathematical series is covergent or divergent?
(a)  D'Alembert's ratio test  (b)  Kramer's rule  (c)  Taylor's theorem  (d)  Chi-Square test

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

Ricky

Moderator

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 3,791

Re: Mathematics Quiz # 1

Shenanigans!  I declare Shenanigans!  This was a history quiz, not a math quiz.

And being so, I got 5 right...

Pretty interesting stuff though.

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"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."

Devantè

Real Member

Registered: 2006-07-14

Posts: 6,400

Re: Mathematics Quiz # 1

I got 5 right, too. Correct answers: 3, 6, 11, 15, 17.