From Latin trivialis, trivial It is an adjective that allows you to name something common and known to all . It is something vulgarized, that does not stand out from the ordinary and lacks importance or novelty.
For example: “I had never heard such a trivial political speech”, “I like reading Jorge Luis Borges because none of his books is trivial”, "Stop arguing, let's talk about something more trivial".
The trivial is the opposite to the deep or novel . Trivial sayings can be ignored, because they don't bring something new or generate knowledge. That is why the adjective denotes a certain contempt for the noun it modifies. A literary or cinematographic critic that qualifies a trivial work shows that it lacks depth, which does not generate a great impact on its audience.
From the study of its etymology it can be seen that the trivial term represents the union of three subjects considered basic in the formation of the Middle Ages: logic, rhetoric and grammar. This preparation represented a path towards the most advanced disciplines, encompassed in the concept of quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
It is interesting to analyze the deterioration we have suffered at the level cultural, taking into account that the subjects that a millennium and a half ago were considered simple represent a great challenge for the medium of today's school population and that only a few consider setting foot in the field of quadrivium.
Trivial Pursuit it is, on the other hand, a game of table that consists of answering questions of general culture to advance. The inventors of the idea were the sports editor Scott Abbott and the photographer Chris Haney , and the game was released in 1981.
A few years later, Trivial Pursuit enjoyed a success considerable in the United States. In 1988 , the company Parker Brothers , manufacturer and distributor of games, bought his license. Statistics indicate that until the year 2004 they were sold about 88 million copies of this game, edited in 17 languages .
He Trivial Pursuit It has six categories of questions, each identified with a color on the board: Art and literature (Brown), Science and Nature (green), Shows (pink), Geography (blue), History (yellow) and Leisure and Sport (orange).
For the mathematics, the word trivial is often used to refer to objects or problems that show a structure of very little complexity. It is worth mentioning that for people outside the world of numbers, whether due to lack of vocation or knowledge, this simplicity is not always obvious. On the other hand, it is also called trivial to those situations that do not generate a deep interest in those who study them but that should be indicated when exposing a theme, simply because they are part of it.
The latter is usually given when trying to demonstrate by mathematical induction (a reasoning that is based on an infinite set of integers that share a series of properties), which is usually divided into two: a first part which shows that if a theorem is met for a value n, then it will also be met for its successive (n + 1); the attempt to verify the theorem for base cases (also called trivial), which are usually "n = 0 "or"n = 1".
Another case of triviality in mathematics can occur when trying to demonstrate that a certain property is fulfilled for all the elements of a set: first, each element of an element will be checked set not empty; if, on the other hand, the set was empty, then one could say that all its elements fulfill the property, since there would be no way to prove otherwise.
