Talk:History of mathematics

older comments
I'm developing some material from zero divided by zero for inclusion here. But its taking some time to work up so I'm putting it here temporarily while it is worked on. Feel free to contribute Barnaby dawson 10:13, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Could somebody please clean up the first lines of 'complex numbers'? They sound rather trivial or non-encyclopedic. Radiant! 22:09, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Spherical trigonometry
I disagree with the following sentence "spherical trigonometry was largely developed by the Persian mathematician Nasir al-Din Tusi (Nasireddin) in the 13th century." Other mathematicians wrote about spherical trigonometry before him, including Ptolemy in the 100s AD in his book the Almagest long before the 1200s. NikolaiLobachevsky 21:08:49 12/26/2006 (UTC)

Best notational system?
"The notational system of the Babylonians was the best of any civilization until the Renaissance"

Boyer, C.B. (1991) [1989], A History of Mathematics (2nd ed.), New York: Wiley, ISBN 978-0-471-54397-8

This doesn't make sense even though it's sourced. Europeans imported hindu numerals during the Renaissance, they didn't invent them, therefore the Renaissance did not produce a new notational system, therefore that quote is misleading and very euro-centric.

David dclork li is a block evader
This comment was used to delete a long post by the person named. I had fixed some of his many mistakes in English, and if the deleted information is incorrect of course it should be removed. But if the information is correct, it should not be deleted no matter who posted it. Rick Norwood (talk) 09:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

European numbers
there are no European numbers, those are Arabic numbers. 2603:7000:DFF0:14F0:A585:7FC7:720E:E45C (talk) 03:20, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The actual Arabic numerals are ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ (see Eastern Arabic numerals). The numbers that, in English, are often known as "Arabic numerals" are derived from those, but they aren't the numerals actually used in much of the Arabic-speaking world. So calling them "European" distinguishes them. Largoplazo (talk) 10:25, 30 January 2024 (UTC)