Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2016 December 26

= December 26 =

Quotitive and partitive
1.How long have these concepts been around? Since Euclid or before, or very recently? The references in the article are very recent, are there older references? 2. I can see that the reverse of division, multiplication, gives the idea of 2 sets off 3 things and 3 sets of 2 things pretty clearly, so I guess I get some of what they mean. But since division and subtraction are so analogous, is there an analogy of partitive and quotitive with subtraction? thanks.71.93.235.5 (talk) 00:15, 26 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Look again; one of the references in the article is dated 1916. I was able to see snippets in Google Books and verify that this is correct. --69.159.60.210 (talk) 05:33, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1916 is still pretty recent compared to Euclid. Actually, I found the entire book at archive.org, It advises teachers to learn but mot teach these terms so they're probably more well known among elementary school teachers than among mathematicians. I found a slightly older source (1895, "The Psychology of Number and Its Applications to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic" by James McLellan & John Dewey) which calls it the difference between division and partition and seems to coin the term quotition, though more in the way of satire. --RDBury (talk) 09:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)