Thread by @matemagikern

Here are ten things I’ve learned from reading Joseph Mazur’s “Enlightening symbols”: #mathreads #historyofmath
1. Mathematical symbols are relatively recent creations. Many of the symbols we use today took form in the 1400s-1600s.

2. From the beginning mathematics was rhetorical. Even the numbers themselves were often written as words. With time, common mathematical words were abbreviated, by omitting letters, thereby becoming a sort of symbols. For instance, p instead of plus and m instead of minus.

3. Exactly how the numerals we used today evolved, is very uncertain. There is little archeological evidence. What we do know is that the idea of our decimal system was transferred from India to the arabs and on to Europe.

4. Fibonacci was not the first to introduce hindu-arabic numerals in the west. There were other books written on the hindu-arabic numerals as much as half a century before Fibonacci’s Liber Abacci.

5. Why did it take time for hindu-arabic numerals to catch on in Europe? Maybe the daring idea of zero hindered acceptance. Maybe the price of and lack of paper. Not until the 16th century was it common in schools/trade. In 1534 Copernicus still used both roman and h-a numerals!

6. Johannes Widmann introduced +-sign. Possible an abbreviation of the “t” in the Latin word “et” meaning “and”. (1400s)
7. Robert Recorde introduced the equal sign: = (1500s)

8. Descartes used superscripts to notate powers of the unknown. He also used letters in the beginning of the alfabet as constants and coefficients, and letters in the end of the alfabet as variables and unknown. (1600s)

9. First appearance of symbol for pi in 1706, by William Jones. I should've known this, but it still somehow blows my mind that Euclid didn't have this symbol!
10. By the 17th century, most rhetorical mathematics writing shifted to symbolic writing.