The above excerpt cryptically recounts the legend of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, from the ninth century bc. After being exiled from Tyre in Lebanon, Dido purportedly sailed to the shores of North Africa (now Tunisia) and requested that the local inhabitants give her and her party the land that could be enclosed by the hide of an ox. Not thinking that an oxhide could encompass a large portion of land, they granted her wish. She then proceeded to have the hide cut into narrow strips and extended end-to-end to form a semicircle bounding the shoreline and encompassing a nearby hill. This area became known as Carthage.

Certain branches of mathematics have arisen out of consideration of the theoretical consequences of known mathematical theorems. More often than not, however, new branches of mathematics have been developed to provide the means to address certain types of practical problems that initially are often very specific. For example, how did Dido know to arrange the oxhide in a circular shape in order to enclose the largest possible area with a given perimeter length?