March 16, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Notations For Operations Took Even Longer
Vieta himself used vowels for the unknown variables and consonants
for the known.
Let me show you how Vieta wrote out his polynomials.
-1 + x == 0
1 + x == 0
Or here is a longer one.
1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x5
+ x6 + x7 + x8 + x9 + x10
= 0
This is an example of what we now call the symbolic algebra.
Now let see how he used to write operations.
q + 1 aequatis sit 0
q + n + 1 aequatis sit 0
When it came to operations, he was not using symbols but actually
writing in words the operation to be performed.
Perhaps he believed that using letters for operations would lead
to a mix up.
The notation for operations is another interesting story.
I was myself very surprised to know that idea to use notation for
operations came even longer to arrive at.
The great Babylonians who otherwise made tremendous advances in
nearly everything that concerns civilization absolutely lacked any notation for
operations.
They tended to use tables and hence it kind of obviated the need
for operation notation.
Egyptians true to their hieroglyphic culture did have symbols for
operations.
For plus they used a pair of legs walking forwards.
For minus they had a pair of legs walking backwards.
It was only in 1400s that the modern symbol of + and – for
addition and subtraction made appearance on the scene.
By the 1600s the notations began to have a modern appearance.
The square root sign that we use today was also invented just
then.
Till then, the symbol Rx- was used to represent square root.
Now this symbol has been hijacked by us doctors to write down our
prescriptions.
One of the men who take serious interest in the symbolism of
mathematics was an English minister and mathematician William Oughtred.
William Oughtred (1574 to 1660) lived in the times of the Scottish
John Napier.
Napier as you know from my previous bedtime stories and even
without it, was the inventor of logarithms and his Napier bones.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor
Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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