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  • 2) Say whether the given statements are true or false. Justify your answer:

a) Fast Streamers are people who can swim well.

b) A civil servant in the UK should be an expert in a narrow professional field.

c) The training for British civil servants is over after university graduation.

d) The best part of being a civil servant is to be responsible for your decisions.

e) Only experienced people can join Fast Stream.

f) If a person joins Fast Stream, he/she works in the same department till retirement.

  • 3) Make a summary of the text.

UNIT 6. FINANCE AND CREDIT

6.1 FROM THE HISTORY OF EARLY MATHEMATICS

6.1.1 THE BEGINNINGS

  • 1) Before reading the text answer the questions:

a) What do you think were the first numerical terms?

b) What could stimulate the development of numerical terms?

  • 2) Read the text and answer the questions.

a) What led to the numeration with five and ten as a base?

b) Were any other bases used in numeration?

c) How were numerical records kept?

d) When did the symbols for 5, 10 and 20 appear?

e) What resulted from the appearance of the symbols 5, 10, 20?

Numerical terms, expressing some of the most abstract ideas, came slowly into use. Their first occurrence made a distinction only between one, two, and many. The development of the crafts and of commerce stimulated this crystallization of the number concept. Numbers were arranged and bundled into larger units, usually by the use of the fingers of the hand or of both hands, a natural procedure in trading. This led to the numeration first with five, later with ten as a base, completed by addition and sometimes by subtraction, so that twelve was conceived as 10+2, or 9 as 10-1. Sometimes 20, the number of fingers and toes was selected as a base. Numerical records were kept by means of bundling, strokes on a stick, knots on a string, pebbles or shells arranged in heaps of five. From this method to the introduction of special symbols for 5, 10, 20 etc., was only a step, and we find such symbols in use at the beginning of written history, at the so-called dawn of civilization. Once it was reached, numbers could be expressed with reference to a base, with the aid of which large numbers could be formed; thus a primitive type of arithmetic originated. Fourteen was expressed as 10 + 4, sometimes as 15 – 1. Multiplication began where 20 was expressed not as 10 + 10, but as 2x10. Division began where 10 was expressed as “half of a body,” although conscious formation of fractions remained extremely rare.

  • 3) Now that you’ve read the text, can you answer the questions in task 1?

6.1.2 The ancient oriental mathematics

  • 1) Answer the questions:

a) There are four parts of the world: the West, the East, the South, and the North. “The

Orient” also means a part of the world. What part of the world is synonymous with “the Orient”?

b) What countries of the ancient Orient do you know? Choose from the following: Babylonia, India, Egypt, Germany, Mesopotamia, Russia, Sumeria, Persia.

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