Business Insider recently counted down the 17 most important equations in terms of their impact on history. (http://www.businessinsider.com/17-equations-that-changed-the-world-2014-3#ixzz2w2seg87Y)

Some of these equations are common public knowledge such as Pythagorus and E=mc^2. Others such as logarithms, normal distribution, the law of gravity and the square root of minus one are equations known to a large proportion of students who have studied maths past 16.

These equations cover a variety of different topics from the crux of the universe to the probability distribution of a variable, however the most important according to Business Insider is one of the oldest that governs a significant part of geometry.

Personally, I believe that it is difficult to rank equations and theorems on their importance to our current society but to rank them on the effect that they had at the time of their conception is possible but also an extremely difficult task.

How many of these do you know?