COLEGIO DE SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

De La Salle Supervised School
Guinsay, Danao City
S.Y. 2023-2024

COLLEGE
AND
ADVANCED
ALGEBRA(Prelim)
Compiled by:
Mary May C. Manto, LPT

2023
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 Table of Contents
Module 1 Page No. Date

Lesson 1 : Prerequisites

1.1 Real 3-13

Numbers:
Algebra
essentials

1.2 Exponents 13-20

and Scientific
Notation

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 Introduction
It’s a cold day in Antarctica. In fact, it’s always a cold day in
Antarctica. Earth’s southernmost continent, Antarctica
experiences the coldest, driest, and windiest conditions
known. The coldest temperature ever recorded, over one
hundred degrees below zero on the Celsius scale, was
recorded by remote satellite. It is no surprise then, that no
native human population can survive the harsh conditions.
Only explorers and scientists brave the environment for any length of time.
Measuring and recording the characteristics of weather conditions in Antarctica
requires a use of different kinds of numbers. Calculating with them and using them
to make predictions requires an understanding of relationships among numbers. In
this chapter, we will review sets of numbers and properties of operations used to
manipulate numbers. Tis understanding will serve as prerequisite knowledge
throughout our study of algebra and trigonometry

Lesson 1 Medieval period and

the Renaissance

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this section students will:
 Discuss the development of mathematics in the medieval and renaissance
period

Medieval Mathematics
Medieval European interest in math differs with those of modern mathematicians. They
believed mathematics provided the basis to understand the created order of nature
justified by Plato's Timeaus that presents an elaborately wrought account formation of
the universe and by biblical passage in the Book of Wisdom that God had ordered all
things in measure, number and weight.
12th century European scholars traveled to Spain and Sicily seeking scientific Arabic
texts sparking a mathematics revival. Fibonacci, writing in the Liber Abaci, 1202 AD,
and updated in 1254 AD, produced the first significant mathematical concepts by
Europeans in more than a thousand years. The texts introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals
to Europe.
The 14th century saw development of new mathematical concepts. One important
contribution was development of mathematics of local motion. Thomas Bradwardine
proposed that speed, V for velocity, increases in arithmetic proportion as the ratio of
force, F, to resistance, R, increases in geometric proportion. Bradwardine expressed a

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series of specific examples and although logarithms were not yet available we can
express his conclusion as V = log (F/R).

Renaissance Mathematics
During the Renaissance, development of mathematics and accounting interwove.
Teaching of subjects and books published was often for children of merchants sent to
reckoning schools where they learned skills useful for trade and commerce. Luca
Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (Review of
Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion) was first printed and published in Venice,
1494 AD. It included a 27 page treatise on bookkeeping; Particularis de Computis et
Scripturis (Details of Calculation and Recording). It was primarily for merchants as a
reference text, a source of pleasure from mathematical puzzles and to aid the education
of their sons. In his book Summa Arithmetica, Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and
minus that became standard notation of Italian Renaissance mathematics. Summa
Arithmetica was the first book printed in Italy to contain algebra. Pacioli borrowed much
of the work of Piero Della Francesca.
In Italy, during the first half of the 16th century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana
Tartaglia discovered solutions for cubic equations. Gerolamo Cardano published them
in his book Ars Magna, 1545 AD, together with a solution for the quartic equations
(equations of the 4th degree) discovered by his student Lodovico Ferrari. In 1572 AD
Rafael Bombelli published his L'Algebra demonstrating perspectives with imaginary
quantities that could appear in Cardano's formula for solving cubic equations.
Simon Stevin's book, De Thiende (The Art of Tenths), first published in Dutch, 1585 AD,
contained the first systematic treatment of decimal notation that influenced all later
works on real number systems.
Driven by the demands of navigation and a growing need for accurate maps across
larger geographic areas trigonometry became an important branch of mathematics.
Regiomontanus's table of sine and cosine was published in 1533 AD. Bartholomaeus
Pitiscus was first to use the word trigonometry in his Trigonometria, 1595 AD.
During the Renaissance the desire of artists to represent the natural world realistically,
together with the rediscovered philosophy of the Greeks, led them to study
mathematics. Many were scholars, the engineers and architects of that time who
needed mathematics. The art of painting by perspective and the geometries required
were studied intensely.

Lesson 2 Birth of the Calculus

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this section students will:
 Discuss the birth of the calculus: Newton and Leibniz.

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Calculus is the study of things in motion or things that are changing. It uses concepts
from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and precalculus. The word itself comes from a
Latin word meaning“pebble” because pebbles used to be used in calculations.
Calculus has applications in both engineering and business because of its usefulness in
optimization.
For example, an engineer could use calculus to find out the least amount of material
needed for a machine to still operate correctly. Alternatively, a human resource director
can use it to figure out the minimum number of employees needed for a new site to
operate.

Stretching from the days of ancient Greece, calculus was developed and refined
throughout the centuries, up until the time of Newton and Leibniz. But when it comes to
who gets the credit for “discovering” one of the most revolutionary concepts in all of

mathematics, the matter is a little unclear.

Sir Isaac Newton was a mathematician and scientist, and he

was the first person who is credited with developing calculus.
It is is an incremental development, as many other
mathematicians had part of the idea. Newton’s teacher, Isaac
Barrow, said “the fundamental theorem of calculus” was
present in his writings but somehow he didn’t realize the
significance of it nor highlight it. As Newton’s teacher, his
pupil presumably learned things from him. Fermat invented
some of the early concepts associated with calculus: finding
derivatives and finding the maxima and minima of equations.
Many other mathematicians contributed to both the

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development of the derivative and the development of the
integral.

Newton was, apparently, pathologically averse to controversy.

Ironically, the person who was so averse to it ended up
embroiled in the biggest controversy in mathematics history
about a discovery in mathematics. It was a cause and effect
that was not an accident; it was his aversion that caused the
controversy.

Newton’s Published Papers on Calculus

The controversy surrounds Newton’s

development of the concept of calculus
during the middle of the 1660s. Between
1664 and 1666, he asserts that he invented
the basic ideas of calculus. In 1669, he
wrote a paper on it but refused to publish it.
He wrote two additional papers, in 1671 and 1676 on calculus,
but wouldn’t publish them. In time, these papers were
eventually published. The one he wrote in 1669 was published
in 1711, 42 years later. The one he wrote in 1671 was
published in 1736, nine years after his death in 1727. The
paper he wrote in 1676 was published in 1704. None of his
works on calculus were published until the 18th century, but
he circulated them to friends and acquaintances, so it was
known what he had written. This wasn’t just hearsay, and he
used the techniques of calculus in his scientific work.

Leibniz’s Paper on Calculus

But Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz independently

invented calculus. He invented calculus
somewhere in the middle of the 1670s. He said
that he conceived of the ideas in about 1674,
and then published the ideas in 1684, 10 years
later. His paper on calculus was called “A New
Method for Maxima and Minima, as Well
Tangents, Which is not Obstructed by Fractional
or Irrational Quantities.” It was six pages,
extremely obscure, and was very difficult to
understand.

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One consideration we take as modern readers is that at that
time, what we today think of as absolutely fundamental to
start thinking about calculus, was that some of those ideas
simply didn’t exist at all, such as the idea of function. The
concept itself wasn’t formulated until the 1690s after calculus
was invented, so people’s understanding of it was a little
vague.

Newton and Leibniz didn’t understand it in any more of a

formal way at that time. This was a problem for all of the
people of that century because they were unclear on such
concepts as infinite processes, and it was a huge stumbling
block for them. They were worried about infinitesimal lengths
of time. Both Newton and Leibniz thought about infinitesimal
lengths of time. How far does something go in an infinitesimal
length of time? That kind of thinking leads to all sorts of
paradoxes, including Zeno’s paradoxes.

A famous couplet from a poem by Alexander Pope

helps to demonstrate the 17th-century view of
Newton, for these are the kinds of things one would
like to have written about oneself. “Nature and
Nature’s laws lay hid at night; God said, Let Newton
be! And all was light.” So this was Alexander Pope on Newton.

The Controversy Between Newton and Leibniz

The controversy between Newton and Leibniz started in the

latter part of the 1600s, in 1699. Leibniz statement of Newton,
then as now, calls us to take notice of the importance of one
great mind commenting on another, “Taking mathematics from
the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived,
what he has done is much the better part.”

But when Newton began to realize that Leibniz had the ideas
of calculus, which he himself began to realize in the 1770s,
Newton’s response to ensure that he received the credit for
calculus was to write a letter to Leibniz. In the letter, he
encoded a Latin sentence that begins, “Data aequatione
quotcunque…” It’s a short Latin sentence whose translation is,
“Having any given equation involving never so many flowing
quantities, to find the fluxions, and vice versa.” This sentence
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encapsulated Newton’s thinking about derivatives. He took
that sentence and he took the individual letters a, c, d, e, and
he put them just in order. He said there are six a’s, two c’s,
one d, 13 e’s, two f’s. He put them in order and this was what
he included in this letter to Leibniz to establish his priority for
calculus. Even though you read the sentence, it means very
little to anybody. Even a mathematician wouldn’t know from
the actual translation of the sentence exactly what it was that
he had done.

He tried to establish his priority in that fashion, but what

followed were accusations that Leibniz had read some of
Newton’s manuscripts before he conceived his own ideas. But,
since Leibniz had published first, people who sided with
Leibniz said that Newton had stolen the ideas from Leibniz.

It became a huge mess that, incidentally, led to the retardation

of British mathematics for the next century because they
didn’t take advantage of the developments of calculus that
took place in continental Europe.

Reference:
 https://www.digitmath.com/medieval-european-renaissance-
mathematics.html#:~:text=During%20the%20Renaissance%20the
%20desire,that%20time%20who%20needed%20mathematics.
 https://www.wondriumdaily.com/invented-calculus-newton-leibniz/


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