Where do math symbols come from? - John David Walters
Sign up for our newsletter here: https://ed.ted.com/newsletter View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/where-do-math-symbols-come-from-john-david-walters Math is full of symbols: lines,...
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In the 16th century, the mathematician Robert Recorde wrote a book called "The Whetstone of Witte" to teach English students algebra. But he was getting tired of writing the words "is equal to" over and over. His solution? He replaced those words with two parallel horizontal line segments because the way he saw it, no two things can be more equal. Could he have used four line segments instead of two? Of course. Could he have used vertical line segments? In fact, some people did. There's no reason why the equals sign had to look the way it does today. At some point, it just caught on, sort of like a meme. More and more mathematicians began to use it, and eventually, it became a standard symbol for equality. Math is full of sym...
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In the 16th century, the mathematician Robert Recorde wrote a book called "The Whetstone of Witte" to teach English students algebra. But he was getting tired of writing the words "is equal to" over and over. His solution? He replaced those words with two parallel horizontal line segments because the way he saw it, no two things can be more equal. Could he have used four line segments instead of two? Of course. Could he have used vertical line segments? In fact, some people did. There's no reason why the equals sign had to look the way it does today. At some point, it just caught on, sort of like a meme. More and more mathematicians began to use it, and eventually, it became a standard symbol for equality. Math is full of sym...
