User talk:Mpatel/sandbox/History of mathematical notation

Ideas for expansion: approach
Should the article take a historically sequential approach, or a topic by topic approach (for example, algebraic notation, notation for sets etc.) ? There are good reasons for both IMO, but it may be difficult to combine the two.

Perhaps the focus should be towards the most important notational developments in maths, but in a historically accurate sequance, and then related developments could be mentioned. Thoughts on this please ? MP (talk•contribs) 18:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Useful online book
The Cajori book mentioned in the peer review is also online here. MP (talk•contribs) 18:11, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The following looks like quite a useful page too: Earliest uses of Mathematical Symbols. MP (talk•contribs) 19:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Plan
I propose a topic by topic approach, as I feel it may be difficult (or, at the very least, lengthy and fairly unconnected) to write the article historically. This approach also has the advantage that a reader does not have to wade through the whole article to find out when a particular notation was used/invented (they just need to find the topic in the contents).

Here is a very rough proposed outline for the article (this format is still work in progress):


 * Introduction - Discussion of the cultures, countries, people (including some of their important writings) etc. who contributed significantly to the development of mathematical notation, especially those whose notation we still use today.


 * Numerals -Notation used by Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks (and possibly others); discussion of cuneiform, Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, hieroglyphics, number bases etc.


 * Geometry - parallel and perpendicular symbols, symbols for points, lines, planes, triangles, angles, etc.


 * Algebraic symbolism - Discussion of +, =, -, square roots, nth roots, powers, modulus (absolute value) sign, summation sign.


 * Calculus - notation for functions, limits, derivatives, integrals, trigonometric functions, contributions of Euler, etc.


 * Special numbers - $$e$$, $$\pi$$ and $$i$$ (probably more too), contributions of Euler.


 * Logic, Boolean algebra and Set Theory - propositional calculus, symbols for not, and, or, intersection, union etc.


 * Modern times - discussion of modern mathematical topics and any specialised notations used therein; e.g. Category theory (Top for the category of topological spaces, Grp for the category of groups etc.) Current usage, e.g. Halmos symbol for end of proof. Also, a lot more !

The above are intended to be section headings. Comments welcome :) MP (talk•contribs) 19:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions
This looks good; I think the organization is a lot better than in the current article. The only thing I'd change is the title of the last category, Modern Times. Since everything else is by subject, not time, why not just make it "Other," or break it down into more if possible? That's all really, though; otherwise I think this fixes the biggest problem in the old page, it's weird organization.P.L.A.R. (talk) 06:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello there. Thanks for the response. I will change that Modern Times to something else; thanks for the useful suggestions on that. Clearly, the article (my version or the actual one) needs a lot more information. I have found this very daunting (just thinking about how to cover all topics, never mind the references and sources). This is why I basically gave up working on this article for a long time. However, I am going to slowly get back into this article. And I would appreciate any assistance I can get ! I think structure is the key. Now that we have some better kind of organisation, it will be a little easier to include more information. I also suspect there will be some cross-reference within the article, given that it's being written by topic rather than historically. The more people we can get working on this gargantuan article, the better. :) MP (talk•contribs) 21:19, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

History of ...
This is looking well into the future, but would it be a good idea to have articles on, for example, History of algebraic notation, History of calculus notation, just like we have for History of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system ? Of course, the question is, is there enough material to even write such articles. I think that for these examples, there may well be. If there are main article links like the above hypothetical ones (and the actual Hindu-Arabic numerals one), maybe it would cut down on the material in this article and we could focus on discussing the topic more generally here. Just a few random thoughts... MP (talk•contribs) 10:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Probability and statistics
Just found this article: Notation in probability and statistics. MP (talk•contribs) 10:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Table of symbols by date
I think this could be useful: Table of mathematical symbols by introduction date. (!) Need to check accuracy of course, but it's a good heads up. MP (talk•contribs) 10:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Long time no edit
Wow, been almost 2 years since the last edit! Time to do some serious editing. MPatel (talk•contribs) 19:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Plan: Phase 2
Due to the enormity of the task in writing this article, I have a few ideas for organisation and content. Mainly, I want to create a set of suggestions (in this section) for what should be included, whether there should be 'Main article' and 'See also' links and so on.

Suggestions for content

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'Main article' possibilities

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'See also' links

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That's all for now. MPatel (talk•contribs) 19:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
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