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I watched the video of the presentation "The Mathematics of History" by Jean-Baptiste Michel. I found his efforts in trying to explain parts of history using mathematics very interesting. Although I agree that historical events can often be explained by logic and relations, I feel Mr. Michel is pushing it too far by claiming that mathematics can be used to measure and explain historical forces and as a consequence potentially even be used to predict the future. Let me show what I mean by focusing on his example of frequency of wars versus number of casualties. Mr. Michel showed in his presentation that there was a logarithmic relationship between the number of wars during the last two centuries and the number of casualties in these wars. More specifically, he argued that taking the number of wars with a certain number of casualties (e.g. 1K-10K), the number of wars that were 100 times deadlier (e.g. 100K-1M), were 10 times smaller. Obviously it is difficult to argue against the fact that there is an inverse relationship between the number of casualties during a war, and the number of wars of that magnitude. After all, the vast majority of inter-state wars are relatively small in terms of casualties, and a major war like the World War II only happens once or only a few times throughout history. However, I would claim that the mathematical relation shown by Mr. Michel is more of a "snapshot" than a universal rule. Had he for instance looked at the last four centuries, rather than the last two, I am pretty sure that the mathematical relation would have been a different one, as the number of smaller conflicts would have increased, but no other major conflict like the World War II would have happened during this period. As a result, the "100 to 10" formula argued by Mr. Michel would no longer be correct. In my view the number of casualties in a war and the frequency of wars of different magnitudes are driven by a number of various parameters, and cannot

The ideas that Jean-Baptiste Michel presented are quite troubling and inaccurate. The aim on his presentation was to open the viewer's eyes to the mathematics of history, but the body of his presentation, in my opinion, did not work towards the effect of his aim. The example that he presented about the wars in the previous two centuries displaying a mathematical relationship that may be graphed does not necessarily display that mathematics plays an important role in gaining insight into history. This is a simple compilation of statistics, displayed on a graph, not an in-depth analysis of a historical event. What he is doing is narrowing down "History" to a set of numbers: Dates and casualties, which he portrays using mathematics but does not go to the lengths of what I would consider historical knowledge. This is merely a trend of occurrences, similar graphs could be drawn about the increasing population of cockroaches, but that wouldn't make it "Historical knowledge". This TED talk has not influenced my perspective that, although math may play a minor role in some aspects of history, the essence of history: the understanding of people, nations and events in the past remain an area which is alien to math. It is not as if this is a major disadvantage or problem, I believe that it is fairly normal for such a complex subject, which is heavily influenced by the interactions, beliefs and emotions of humans remains largely untouched by the rigid logic of mathematics.

After watching the TED talk, 'The Mathematics of History' by Jean-Baptiste Michel I was left quite astonished. Before this video, I hadn't ever thought in-depth about how mathematics could be used in history, to agree with what Azat has stated above, it's almost "alien" to the subject since history is about the past, and is affected by humans and their actions, whereas mathematics deals with numbers and numerical reasoning. To expand on this thought and in agreement with Michel, one of the core elements of mathematics is finding patterns in numbers, and this does indeed relate to history insofar that finding patterns in history is helpful as it might help us predict future human actions in a very vague way. This relationship gave me a new perspective on the topic as again, I had never thought about it in this way. However, I am of the opinion that Michel's presentation was extremely short and could have benefited if he expanded further, explained further and also gave us more examples. I say this because as a viewer and listener, I am very interested in this discussion as it's a new perspective for me, and listening to someone with greater knowledge about history and historical events explore deeper into it would be very interesting. I feel that Michel just gives us a small opening into this topic, and I would be very interested to see how far we could go with correlating mathematics to history in order to vaguely predict the future.

First of all, I would like to say that the main idea from this ted video is very interesting, how bringing math and historical events closer in order to understand human behavior and explain it in a logical and mathematical manner. One of the most interesting about this video was his explanation on the statistics on the number of casualties and the duration of the war and how it reflects on human behavior of perceiving quantities. However, he did not consider other factors that correlates in each war. Each war would have different factor that will explain the size of the war's causalities that I think will make his explanation on the statistic to be different. I had another problem when I was watching the video. The first formula he showed about the change in irregular verbs to regular verb was confusing. He did not explain it with an example to give a better clarity to his audience and this made me think that he is just putting an equation just to show there is a relationship between math and change in human behavior. It did not give me the certainty that it will work for each irregular verb as it has lack of explanation. Despite the lack of clarity in his formula, maybe it does work since based on his biography, he is an credible person. Despite of the few problems I had when watching the video, his idea is still valid and can be more relevant in the future when most things will become digitalize.

The presentation by Jean-Baptiste Michel sheds a new light on the issue of the role of mathematics in history. While the majority of people willingly cling on to their preconceived notion that mathematics is of no value in terms of historical knowledge, Michel argues that mathematics can be used to enhance our understanding of the past. Two support his argument, Michel even provides two examples of the application of mathematics to history. In my personal opinion, while the examples provided by Michel did demonstrate the role of mathematics in history, they did not show its importance. Sure, we now know that history is quantifiable but what Michel does not tell us is how quantifying history improves our understanding of it or why it is useful in terms of historical knowledge. So it follows that the importance of mathematics in historical knowledge is yet to be demonstrated. To put it simply, I still can't imagine history students performing calculations on their calculators in order to 'learn' history.

This TED talk gives a whole new perspective on hoe math can is not a only a logical subject but also a subject that helps understand other things like nature or culture. Obviously, I knew that math is a vital subject in our education and would help s understand other things but thins video shows why and how it is important. I agree with Baquar on how people think math has absolutely no value unless you are doing something in your carrier like engineering. I may be repeating myself here, I am intrigued by how math has different roles in one's life, in history, in culture. but as Naquib mentioned that math does show the importance of a war, at least its a start of a new Math language that will improve our understanding of everything, I realize that it is a long process and has many flaws but its a start. I have always hated math but if math is going be like I would be really interested in learning and understanding our environment.

I always thought that Mathematics was about numbers and equations put together to result in something concrete. However, after watching the TED talk video, it opened me to a whole new perspective. The idea of calculating history using mathematics is fascinating. Whats even more fascinating is how a formula was created to do so. This broadened my knowledge and perspective on what Mathematics actually was. If we can use Maths to understand history, we can also use Maths to calculate and understand things in the future. Not only that, but we can use maths to understand other aspects of our lives. This itself is very interesting to me and quite cool. I agree with Dylan, the video was relatively short compared to how gripping it was. If the video was longer, and if he provided more examples it would help me better understand the variety in what Maths can be used to understand other things.

I found this video very interesting. Combining history and mathematics is something I've never heard of before. Yes, it does bring a whole bunch of possibilities in the way we can perceive history but I don't find his examples that convincing. I feel like we need to explore this aspect in much more depth to conclude that mathematics does in fact play a role in understanding history. Another point I'd like to make is that, what if we do assume for now that mathematics is an integral part of history- so what? What are the advantages/disadvantages of perceiving history in this way? Do we 'understand' the past better by involving mathematics? Wouldn't understanding the past now become more objective than subjective( does this make history more accurate)? I'm still very interested in exploring more examples of mathematics in history but I do feel that this may bring in some disadvantages in the learning of history. To conclude, Jean-Baptiste Michel has indeed opened up a whole new perspective in the field of history but it is too early to be fully aware of the importance and consequences of this sort of thinking.

The idea of looking at moral values from a science perspective has truly been valuable to the world. It may have answered several questions on what is right and wrong, as from the beginning, we have always related morals with religion and culture, more like morals and values have come from religion mostly. This idea of moral value that have been derived from religion has always intrigued me, the idea of what is right and wrong in the perspective of religion always went against the idea of right and wrong from a science background. This has led me questioning my moral values that do not make sense in a developed society. I guess what I am trying to say here is that, morals that have been derived from religious perspective have always been constrained and inflexible with progress of the world and modern ideas whereas the morals from the science perspective are based on facts that are flexible with the development of the world. Like the example mentioned by Sam Harris about Muslim ladies wearing burkha in a hot weather does not make sense. Religion have a limited boundary which may not be crossed, they already know what's right and wrong like Sam Harris mentioned in his speech, the morals experts know everything, which does allow them to explore more in the world and what it has to offer. On the contrary, science continuously tests its boundaries and if people had followed the moral codes according to religion they most probably never would have found answers to so many questions especially in the area of science such cure to so many diseases. It also justifies the moral reasons we believe in. However, morals based on science perspective have liberated the world of any social and basic moral obligation to the world and its society. Where religion has kept people within the boundaries of moral obligation towards the society, science may have liberated them form any such obligations, cases such the rape, murder, terrorist attacks and bombing nuclear plant

The ideas presented by Sam Harris is the TED talk is quite intriguing, and the point that he had brought upon religion's role in today's views upon morality is surely true. To a large extent, the modern society's thinking contain remnants of religion's former dominance upon approaches to life and of morality. As in the case of the large Abrahamic religions that are rooted rooted in the world, their static nature almost hinders with relevant questions that are more relevant to be rectified today, as Harris pointed out, the question of gay marriage and to that of nuclear proliferation.Where in the lack of religion's preponderance in people's moral compass, staggeringly imminent issues that have a wider set of impact upon the world may undoubtedly be solved more efficiently through a wider popular agreement of its urgency and importance. Perhaps, a logical pathway to morality as is with science would offer a more pragmatic solution to the problem of determining moral dilemmas, or of weighing the importance of issues over others.

This TED talk was actually very interesting. He brought up the idea that science can be the ultimate guide to answering moral questions and that this could be more accurate than religion. To an extent this could be true but I do see some loopholes in this claim. Science can't take things into account such as - intuition, overall context of the situation and its possible impact on society, instinct or even extrasensory perception (information that is not acquired by the usual sensory perceptions but instead with the mind). And even if there is scope for science to gain hold of these aspects as well, such technology has yet to develop. He did give examples of faults he found in religion and spoke about how we shouldn't blindly rely on religious beliefs. For instance, he pointed out that Muslim women wear burkas even when the weather outside is hot but what he has failed to point out is that - why do these women do so? He has looked at this situation from a very narrow point of view. Not all woman are forced to wear the veils and some insist to wear it themselves. In France a few years ago, when the French had planned to ban the veils, there were large protests lead by Muslim women. This clearly shows that many of the women choose to wear the burka and have their logical reasoning for it. I agree with Palak, because of religion and it's teachings of morality some of our actions have been somewhat restrained. There is always some 'fear' element when we do something we aren't supposed to be doing. I am not so sure about other religions but in my religion for instance we have always been told that "God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent" But if all of a sudden we rely on science to answer our moral questions, our actions could become more liberal because of this lack of fear. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not so sure. To conclude, I'm not quite convinced whether science can answer all of our moral questions. Maybe because there are some aspects of m

I found this video interesting because it reminded me of the golden spirals I believe they were called, and how they could often be found all around us such as in the simple patterns in the petals of a flower. Personally, this made me think about where else in the world, whether man made or natural, that different forms of mathematics can be found. Referring to Jean-Baptiste Michel's "The Mathematics of History", there is even a simple mathematical proportionality that can be found in the regularizing of verbs over a period of time. So then, can we use mathematics to derive any other lingering mysteries in the world, such as the proportionality of an empire's size to its period of reign? How reliable will this strand of 'historical' mathematics be? In Ron Eglash's "The Fractals at the Heart of African Designs", can it be proven that the African tribes were whole-heartedly attempting to create fractal patterns, or were they simply trying to create patterns that satisfied aesthetically? In that sense, we can never know what the tribesmen and women of the time were thinking, or whether they were even conscious of such beautiful fractal patterns. In my opinion, it would be interesting if one could personally question one of the tribesmen who designed such patterns in order to determine their thought processes. Perhaps there is a deeper, more fundamental meaning to these recurring fractal patterns in the architecture in these African places that we have yet to understand.

Ron Eglash's talk about fractal patterns in African villages was very intriguing. The perspective that people in Africa are not educated seems even more bizarre after finding out about some of these patterns. Eglash mentioned something about knowing things about mathematical fractals because of algorithms that were applied for practical purposes. I find it to be rather interesting that in seemingly developed communities, we learn mathematics and then we create ways to apply it. However, in these villages, the people are posed with problems and then they use mathematics to solve them. I wonder how this approach changes the different societies' perspectives on mathematics. We often hear students complaining about how 'finding x won't help them in the future', but if people were presented with practical issues that were only solvable by maths, maybe their perspective would change. Another thing that I found to be fascinating was the almost subconscious mathematical relationship between the length of the straw and the strength of the wind in the windscreen example. It would be interesting to see what practical mathematical relationships other cultures have established.