WHAT IS THE REASON TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 CHAPTERS HISTORy OF NUmBERS 7 SURF THE NET 17 LIgHTS CAmERA CgI 27 A LOgICAL FUTURE 37 GLO SSARy 46 SELECTED bIbLIOGRAPHy 47 WEbSITES 47 INDEx 48 SCIENTIST IN THE SPOTLIGHT CHARLES bAbbAGE 10 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 20 ARISTOTLE 30 RENE DESCARTES 40
HIN K LIK E A T S T CIEN T IS WHAT IS THE REASON INTRODUCTION During World War II the Nazis sent cers about war tactics The Allies secret codes to their military offi such as Great Britain and the United States attempted to break those codes because lives and the fate of the world were at stake The Allies were up against the Germans Enigma machine which looked like a typewriter but could turn ordinary mes sages into an encrypted code Because no letter in the code was repeated normal codebreaking methods did not apply British mathematician Alan Turing was working furiously alongside other scien tists to break the Enigma codes In 1939 he helped design a decryption machine that was used in cracking the settings behind the Enigma The Allies could now break Nazi codes in 20 minutes Reason is the ability of the mind to make sense of what is going on through logic Mathematicians such as Turing look for patterns They think about all the different ways to arrive at an answer Computer science is a relatively new field with roots in the mathematical calcula tions of the 1800s By applying math computer scientists develop methods of computing or processing information Mathematicians and computer scientists use their math and science knowledge to investigate and their reason to solve problems in a logical way Whether it is coming up with a code to protect a bank account or calculating a submarine’s safe journey to the bottom of the ocean and back decision-making systems all rely on the ability to reason 5
