the.com/algebra
the ancient art of hunting numbers that refuse to introduce themselves.
means The branch of mathematics that uses letters and symbols to stand in for unknown numbers, letting you solve for the values hiding inside equations.
from From Arabic al-jabr, literally "the reunion of broken parts" — a word for bone-setting before it was a word for math. It came from the title of a 9th-century treatise by the Baghdad scholar al-Khwarizmi (whose name, fittingly, also gave us "algorithm"). Latin medieval scholars borrowed al-jabr wholesale, and for a time "algebra" could still mean the surgeon's craft of resetting fractures — the unknown number, like a snapped limb, waiting to be made whole again.
- arabic roots
- From al-jabr, meaning the reunion of broken parts.
- author
- Persian scholar al-Khwarizmi gave us algorithm too.
- zero hero
- Whole subject leans on a number meaning nothing.
- x marks
- Descartes popularized x for the unknown.
- older than thought
- Babylonians solved quadratics 4,000 years ago.
al-khwarizmi's al-jabr — 9th-century persian mathematician whose treatise 'al-kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wal-muqabala' established algebraic methods
cardano's ars magna — 1545 italian text that published the cubic formula and established modern algebraic notation