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Joy. M. Monteiro


P Mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form “𝑝 implies 𝑞”, …

or so says Bertrand Russell. Unfortunately, this lovely definition of mathematics is no longer strily true, but
for all our purposes, it is fine. Russell was trying to reduce mathematics to logic, but that program failed, and
so does this definition.
While the previous definition takes most of the ‘hallowedness’ out of math, it is so general that it is com-
pletely useless for anyone trying to learn it. A nicer place to start from is to say that mathematics in general is
a paern finding machine – you dump in some objes (numbers, triangles, apples, whatever), and out comes
some kind of paerns.
us, we first have to have some way of referring to groups of objes. is is done via the notion of a ‘set’.
A set can contain anything – mathematics is not about numbers alone, though ecologists running all kinds
of statistical tests might think otherwise. A quick glance through a decent math text will show you very few
aual numbers, and more greek (Whether that is a good thing or not, well…).
Now that we have some objes to work with, we would like to find some ways of combining them: Hence
the notion of a funion. Some funions make sense when applied to some sets and not to others – for example,
you can add two numbers, but not two circles. You can stretch a circle, but not a number. us, one can see
that once we choose a set, there are only some funions which we can use along with these. e number of
such funions may be H, but still it is not every conceivable funion.
Now, where does the paern business come in? Well, people with no other useful work to do have seen
that certain sets that we use all the time, like say, the set of all integers or triangles have certain properties –
an integer is either positive, negative or zero, every integer has an integer bigger than it and one smaller than
it, every triangle has an area, three sides with definite length, three angles, maybe even a color. Now, these are
paerns of these sets. Mathematicians like to call such properties or paerns of a set as its struure. ey then
ask the question - given a set and a struure (say area), what kind of funions preserve it?
Of course, a couple of millenia were needed before this kind of general piure of mathematics could emerge.
People were noticing paerns from a long time, but only recently were a set of paerns seen as simply different
ways of viewing the same thing, and thus there are a few very interesting ones to study. Each of these properties
being studied has now a standard name - study of things like length, angle, area is called geometry and study
of things like addition, multiplication, ordering (of numbers) is called algebra . Prey much anything in math
can be roughly put into one of these categories. You want to study numbers themselves , then of course you
have number theory.

Mathematics, like music, is something that comes only by praice. However intelligent you may be, the un-
fortunate fa is that to do math, you need to do math. Reading math is as useless as trying to learn English
using a diionary - unless you have a need/interest in math, math simply will not be accessible.


 Moral preaching apart, there is also another reason why math seems impenetrable to the lay person. Some-
time at the end of the 19𝑡ℎ century, mathematics was deeply changed by an approach called formalism, which
said that mathematics should be approached like logic: state a set of axioms, define a way to combine state-
ments to produce new statements, and use these to create new statements, and so on. For example, If we assume
that the statements X is an idiot and all idiots are short are true, we should be able to infer that X is short. At
its very nuts and bolts, mathematics is essentially a colleion of statements produced like this.
e need for formalist methods came from the discovery of various paradoxes which followed from stan-
dard assumptions in mathematics, which made mathematicians question as to whether whatever they are
doing is standing on any kind of firm ground. So the formalists decided to rewrite mathematics assuming very
few axioms which are so simple that they should be ‘obvious’ to whoever sees them, and derive everything
from there in the way described above. Now, considering how much math had been done before this century
for over  millenia, it was a hell of a lot of work to rewrite everything. Formalists denied any role for intuition
in math, since ‘Pure math is the set of all propositions…’, and so on. us, the presentation that you see in
textbooks is mathematics stripped of all intuition and meaning.
is, of course, is not the way mathematicians work. Only the end result of their work will look as dull and
tasteless since it has to be ‘rigorous’ in the formalist sense. However, this rigor is very useful, and frequently
helps clarify thinking on even non-mathematical problems. For example, consider the statement ‘An animal is
intelligent if it has the capacity for thought’. While it may seem innocent, a mathematician will have nightmares
about it – if she has to start from scratch and define everything, she can define the words ‘animal’ and ‘capacity’
easily, but when it comes to defining ‘intelligent’ or ‘thought’, there simply will be no agreement on a decent
definition. If you cannot even define it, there seems to be lile point in going forward, especially as a scientist.
us, the first thing to do while writing a research proposal is to remove all words that you cannot define
in a clear manner, and then go back to check why you cannot define it, and you will discover gaps in your
knowledge which would otherwise would have remained unexamined.


Like was already discussed, the notion of a set is completely basic to math, the other being a funion. A third
is, of course, all the things that go into sets – numbers, squares and so on, but only really basic is the obje
that we call a number. Some properties of sets, like how many elements it contains can only be defined using
numbers. A set is a group of objes enclosed by flower brackets:

𝐴 = {1, 2, 3, …} ()
𝐵 = {𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑐, …} ()
𝐶 = {†, ⋄, ∘} ()
𝑆 = {x : x is an even number} ()
𝑋 = {𝐴, 𝐵, 𝐶, 𝑆} ()

As you will know, the last but one method of describing a set is most convenient. It reads “set of all x su
that x is an even number”. If we say that two sets are equal means that they have all the same elements.
Now, there is no reason why we should not consider a set itself as an obje, which is exaly how the last
set is defined. With every set, there are a few very basic relations:
• ∈: 𝑎 ∈ 𝑆 means the obje 𝑎 is a member of set 𝑆.

• ⊂: 𝑠 ⊂ 𝑆 means all the elements of set 𝑠 are also members of 𝑆, but not every member of 𝑆 is an element
of 𝑠. To write it symbolically 𝑠 ⊂ 𝑆 ⟹ ∀𝑥 ∈ 𝑠, 𝑥 ∈ 𝑆 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠 ≠ 𝑆.(∀ stands for ‘for all’)

• ⊆: 𝑠 ⊆ 𝑆 means prey much the same as above, only that 𝑠 and 𝑆 may be equal.
Now that we have some basic relations, we can now define basic operations on sets:


 • Set Union: e union of two sets 𝐴 and 𝐵 is the set of all elements which belongs to 𝐴 or 𝐵 or both.
Symbolically, 𝐶 = 𝐴 ∪ 𝐵 ⟹ 𝑥 ∈ 𝐶 ⟹ 𝑥 ∈ 𝐴 𝑜𝑟 𝑥 ∈ 𝐵.
• Set Interseion: e set of all elements which belongs to both 𝐴 and 𝐵.
• Set Complement (relative to a set 𝑈 ): e set of all elements of 𝑈 which are not elements of 𝐴, given
𝐴 ⊆ 𝑈.
• Cartesian Produ: 𝐴 × 𝐵 is the set of all pairs of the form (𝑎, 𝑏) where 𝑎 ∈ 𝐴 and 𝑏 ∈ 𝐵, in the same
order.
ere are other operations like these, check wikipedia if you so wish.
note how these relations and operations are similar to what we have with numbers: ≤, ≥ are typical
relations and +, − are typical operations. So what we are trying to do is for every entity in mathematics, see
if we can come up with some way to ‘relate’(compare) these entities and ‘operate’ on them to come up with
another entity.
Some typical sets we oen encounter are:
• ℕ: e set of all natural numbers.
• ℤ: e set of all integers.
• ℚ: e set of all rational numbers (all numbers of the form 𝑝/𝑞, where 𝑝 and 𝑞 are both integers).
• ℝ: e set of all real numbers.

.
• Write down the symbolic equivalents for Set Interseion and Complement and Cartesian Produ.

 e Funion
e other foundational block in mathematics is the funion. Given two sets 𝐴 and 𝐵 (where 𝐵 can be equal
to 𝐴), a funion is a way to identify an element in 𝐴 with only one element in 𝐵. is means that a funion
will not identify one element in 𝐴 with two or more elements in 𝐵. Why? that’s simply the way it is defined,
nothing else. However, any element of 𝐵 can have multiple elements of 𝐴 identified with it. e example below
will clarify this.
Here 𝐴 is called the Domain and 𝐵 is called the Range. Symbolically, this funion is wrien as:
𝑓∶𝐴↦𝐵 ()
If an element in 𝐴 is identified with a unique element in 𝐵, then the relation is called one-one. A good
example is the roll number funion 𝑟 ∶ {Names of students in class} ↦ ℕ. No two students can have the
same roll number, but there are more natural numbers than there are students. So, no element in the range
is identified with more than one element in the domain, but there are elements in the range which have no
equivalent in the domain. us I cannot call out an arbitrary natural number and expe a student to answer
the roll call.
If every element in the range has a corresponding element in the domain, then the funion is called onto. An
example is the room assignment funion 𝑏 ∶ {𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑓ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠} ↦ {𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑚𝑠𝑖𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑙}, when the number
of hostelites is greater than or equal to the number of rooms(which is almost always). us, one room may be
assigned to more than one (unfortunate) hostelite, but all rooms will have atleast one hostelite assigned to it.
us, I cannot refer to my friend by his room number – his room might have more than one occupant.
If a funion is both one-one and onto, it is called a bijeion. is is the same room assignment funion
when number of hostelites is equal to the number of rooms. Now, if I know my friend’s name, I can lookup his
room number or if I know his room number I can find out his name(of course, the laer will mean he probably
is not my friend, but given poor memories of people…).


.
• Is the area assignment funion 𝑎 ∶ {set of all triangles} ↦ ℝ a bijeion?

• How about the perimeter funion?

• How about a funion that takes a triangle and rotates it by 10∘ clockwise?

 …and what about these things called numbers?

Frankly, no one knows what numbers are. Are they real? What we deal with are of course simply represen-
tations of numbers as symbols or pieces of shells. Do numbers exist? No idea. Mathematicians simply gave
up searching for these things called numbers and started worrying about their properties – If there were
some entities and they had the following properties, they would be rationals, reals, and so on. Most people
have a suspicion that they are around somewhere, but no one really know where to look nor what they look
like. us, we have this elaborate system of symbol manipulation called arithmetic which for all means and
purposes deals with entites which do not exist. But the strange thing is that mathematics will still be valid if
someone proves that there aually no numbers, since all it cares about are the properties of things, not things
themselves. Sounds very similar to religion, doesn’t it? God help us all.