Editing History of science (section)

====Chinese mathematics====
{{Further|Chinese mathematics|History of mathematics#Chinese}}
From the earliest the Chinese used a positional decimal system on counting boards in order to calculate. To express 10, a single rod is placed in the second box from the right. The spoken language uses a similar system to English: e.g. four thousand two hundred and seven. No symbol was used for zero. By the 1st century BCE, negative numbers and decimal fractions were in use and ''[[The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art]]'' included methods for extracting higher order roots by [[Horner's method]] and solving linear equations and by [[Pythagorean theorem|Pythagoras' theorem]]. Cubic equations were solved in the [[Tang dynasty]] and solutions of equations of order higher than 3 appeared in print in 1245 CE by [[Ch'in Chiu-shao]]. [[Pascal's triangle]] for binomial coefficients was described around 1100 by [[Jia Xian]].<ref>{{cite book
 |last1=Martzloff
 |first1=Jean-Claude
 |title=A History of Chinese Mathematics
 |year=2006
 |publisher=Springer Berlin Heidelberg
 |isbn=9783540337836
 |page=17
 |language=English, Japanese, Chinese
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ACK1jreKgCoC&q=jia+xian+pascal+triangle
}}
</ref>

Although the first attempts at an axiomatization of geometry appear in the [[Mohist]] canon in 330 BCE, [[Liu Hui]] developed algebraic methods in geometry in the 3rd century CE and also calculated [[pi]] to 5 significant figures. In 480, [[Zu Chongzhi]] improved this by discovering the ratio <math>\tfrac{355}{113}</math> which remained the most accurate value for 1200 years.