Sir John A Macdonald's Math Notebook
Stored away in Library and Archives Canada is a mathematics notebook from 1827 written by Sir John A. Macdonald while he attended the Midland District Grammar School on Rideau Street in Kingston. A brief description of the contents of the notebook is given by Donald Creighton in his biography of Macdonald:
“And by 1827, when he was just twelve years old, he had worked his way through numbers and their properties, decimals, ratios and geometrical proportions, and was deep in square and cube roots.”
These bare bones do not tell the whole story. There is much more information locked away in this little treasure.
Contents of the Notebook
- Properties of Numbers
- Problems Related to the Properties of Numbers
- Addition of Fractions
- Subtraction of One Fraction from Another
- Multiplication of Fractions
- Division of Fractions
- Decimals
- Ratios and Proportions
- Arithmetical Proportion
- Geometrical Proportion
- Arithmetical Progression
- Geometrical Progression
- Involution
- Evolution
- Square Root
- Application and Use of the Square Root
- Cube Root
- Application and Use of the Cube Root
- Doodles
