The obelus ÷ represents division on calculator keyboards, and sometimes in elementary education. It has a long non-mathematical history starting before 200 BC. Its earliest use as a symbol for div...

I’ve noticed a recurring post on social media that presents an image suggesting the shapes of Hindu-Arabic numerals are connected to the angles within their design: This claim seems dubious to me....

respectively. My question is to know what the letter G G stands for, in the notation of these three subgroups. While the G G in GL(V) G L (V) denotes the "general" linear group, I don't think this has the same origin for the similitude group. Neither the French nor the German translations of similitude begin with "g". Notice that writing SO(V, b) S …

AFAIK there's rare evidence to show that $\\sum$ has the meaning of "sum" in Greek, so why mathematician chose $\\sum$ to be the summation operator?

Q&A for people interested in the history and origins of science and mathematics

2015年6月15日 · In a book, I saw a short anecdote about something called the "Horus-eye" hieroglyph, supposedly used in parts to represent fractions (the book dates to 1997). Wikipedia has an article on the symbol...

2018年12月30日 · How did Ruffini discover his method of polynomial division? At that time was it known that polynomial division works similar to integer division?

This question arose in a conversation with a teacher who was introducing square roots to her students. I know from the website Earliest Uses of Symbols of Operation that the symbol $\\sqrt{}$ has its

2019年1月7日 · Uniqueness of the inverse follows from just the group axioms. Since rings are defined to be commutative groups with respect to addition the question should be who first proved uniqueness of the inverse in groups. Hölder mentions that it follows in Zurückfühnmg einer beliebigen algebraischen Gleichung auf eine Kette von Gleichungen (1889), he uses the cancelation law as one of the axioms ...

2016年6月1日 · It was common among mathematicians of the 17th century to use vowels; thus Fermat's writing on adequality is full of A's and E's. Since A is used much too often the choice of the next vowel, E, was all too natural. I don't think Euler used the symbol to honor himself. Possibly once he chose E, the symbol was retained by later mathematicians so as to honor Euler.