The Start of Everything - the Fact-orials Table of Contents

Background

Not to sound trite or corny, but there was a time where our ancestors were mostly concerned with surviving - the time and effort (much less the brain power) needed to begin wondering about Life, Death, the Universe, and Everything In It, was just not important. Life was a struggle - wondering and thinking about things other than survival were a waste.

But as man evolved, as society developed, and as survival was no longer a 24/7 challenge, there was time to sit and wonder, to think, to speculate. Stories emerged to help explain some of the mysteries of life, such as the origin of the earth, the existence of different species and how they came about, the seasons, and more.

From those questions and the resulting answers came more questions and yet more answers. And so on. This is still the status quo of humanity - continually developing new social structures, new ways to understand self, the environment, the Universe, and everything within it.

It's from these first thoughts that Fact-orials tries to start - to follow the paths where human thought and endeavour have sprung and where they've gone.

Let's follow some paths.

One set of paths we can follow is the use of numbers to record, transmit, discover, and predict information:

Math Fact-orials - the story here starts with The Number 1, mathematical tools are developed to analyze many different aspects of the Universe.

• Accounting Fact-orials - starting with The Start of Accounting, numbers and math are used to describe financial information about an entity

Vocabulary used:

For more information check out these links (comment to add your favourite link):

The Story of Mathematics

Where might you have come from?

Fact-orials Index

Where might we go?

• Accounting Fact-orials
• Math Fact-orials

Friends of Fact-orials

A major thank you and huge shout-out to everyone who's helped out in making Fact-orials better!

• Aleesha Sattva, my loving, supportive, and long-suffering wife, who not only has helped in numerous ways, both great and small, but also manages to look interested when I start talking math at meals (I should note that after reading this to her, her response was "Only at meals?"). It'd be easier to list out where you won't see her influence than to list out where you will. Thanks Sweetie!
• Stefan Velicu, a great friend and mentor I met during my days at Socratic.org, who has taken time away from his own life and enterprises to give me support, advice, guidance, and very insightful edits. For example, the look and feel of Fact-orials comes directly from Stefan's advice. Thanks Stefan!
• Alan Pinck, another great friend and mentor also met during my Socratic.org days, who has also given of his valuable time to give guidance, support, advice, and editing suggestions. For example, Alan is directly responsible for the green-buttoned, collapsable index sections on the right side of every page - thanks Alan!