Timeline for Why are polynomials so useful in mathematics?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 15, 2014 at 18:54 | comment | added | Dirk | I would phrase the first reason for the usefulness of quadratics as "They imply a notion of positivity". | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 17:00 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Todd Trimble | ||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 10:32 | comment | added | Paul Siegel | @GerryMyerson It would indeed have been news to him, but he would probably agree once he realized that $\mathbb{R}^2$ with the standard inner product is a model for the Euclidean axioms. I did not claim (or need to claim) that this is the historical starting point for geometry. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 9:44 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | "this is the starting point of nearly all of geometry" --- it would have been news to Euclid that he was equipping a vector space with a quadratic structure. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 6:53 | history | answered | Paul Siegel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |