A BRIEF HISTORY OF NUMBERS

Saturday, May 5th, 3:00 PM, Morristown Centennial Library

Join retired Professor Bill Robinson of Morristown for a presentation about the history of quantifying the world around us. People have been using numbers for several millennia to help them describe quantities of things, measurements of properties and buildings and so forth. The talk will cover the evolution of human efforts to represent numbers in a way that's more helpful than counting on fingers and toes, starting with the "natural numbers" (1,2,3,…) and progressing to fractions and to what mathematicians describe as "real numbers." You don't need to be a mathematician to appreciate or understand this topic, so leave the math anxiety behind, and join us for light refreshments and a journey through one of humanity's most foundational systems. Ages 12-adult.