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How Did Gauss Contribute To Math

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Carl Friedrich Gauss, from his youth, was destined to be a great mathematician. By the time Gauss turned three, he had already taught himself to read and write. Additionally, Gauss often told acquaintances and friends that before he learned to speak, he learned to make mental calculations. Throughout his lifetime, Gauss made discoveries which would benefit many fields within mathematics. Gauss contributed greatly to the fields of arithmetic, statistics, geometry, algebra, and astronomy. The origin of this famed mathematician began in Brunswick, Germany on April 30th in the year of 1777. Gauss had humble beginnings, and lived in a small house with his parents. Gauss's parents were both peasant-laborers, which was expressed by the local dialect they spoke (West 15-16). Gauss's father, Gebhard Dietrich Gauss, worked in various areas; he worked as a "brick layer, gardener, canal-tender, street butcher, and accountant for funeral society" (West 16). Gauss's mother, when she was Dorothea Benze, worked for seven years as a maid before she married Gebhard. Gauss was Dorothea's only child, but he had a half-brother, Johann George Heinrich, who was the son of Gauss's father from an earlier marriage (West 16). Gauss was an intelligent child, and at the age of three, he corrected an …show more content…

The idea is despite how meticulously an item is measured in order to receive the correct measurement, one is likely to observe different lengths each time something is measured. If one takes a measurement x amount of times, the lengths will likely be similar in value, but they will not all be equal. Therefore, the "true" value is unknown. Gauss developed a formula in which all the desired measurements are taken and the optimal "true" value can be calculated. Today, statisticians use the Method of Least Squares when they need to measure errors; the formula allows them to calculate answers (West

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