This post started as a response to a comment.

Yes, I happen to be a huge admirer of René DesCartes (1596-1650). DesCartes is often noted for two things:

• He is considered the father of analytical geometry,
• and he wrote a rather silly essay called "Meditations" which gets assigned in social study classes.

Analytical Geometry created an axiomatic system that unified Euclidean geometry and algebra. This was one of the most important achievements in Western History.

To support my claim I need simply point out that you are most likely staring at an illuminated cartesian plane as you read this article.

Yes, the mathematical model for that monitor you stare at all day was formalized by and named for DesCartes.

So, I decided to check out the Wikipedia article on DesCartes. The entry waxes-philosophic about the silly essay and mentions the formalization of analytic geometry as an after thought.

I am not surprised. I've learned that wikipedia is edited by a tribe of pedantic clowns. I suspect that most wiki-editors are incapable of doing basic mathematics.

As I sat down to write this post, I pondered the observation: I live in a world built around mathematics, but I rarely encounter discussions of math.

What happened to us? Why do we spend our lives blathering about politics when discoveries made in mathematics, physics and science are so much more interesting.

So, I decided to write a SteemIt post.

Since I need a graphic for my SteemIt post, I decided to create an image of a simple mathematical curve.

It turns out that graphing mathematical functions in HTML is extremely difficult. I spent several hourse researching different ways to go about the task. I ended up stuffing 111 points into a polyline to make the image. The code for such a curve shouldn't be more than four lines, but it ended up being an unsightly mess with eight lines of code. Here is the code.

In conclusion, we have these machines built on elegant mathematical models. As humans we are becoming sloppy in the way that we engage in mathematics and reason.

Why isn't there an elegant way to write equations and graph curves in HTML? The little blue line in this image took me several hours to code. It only took seconds to make the circle and ellipse: