Timeline for Origins of Mathematical Symbols/Names
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 13, 2010 at 4:59 | comment | added | KConrad | Um, can someone point to an actual reference justifying this? Why would a letter from an Italian word be used here when the topic was systematically developed by the French? It feels like an artificial etymology (and Kevin is conceding he has no source on this, but people's willingness to believe it surprises me). I once heard O was in honor of Oka. Hmm... Perhaps O is related to the very long (since 1870s) tradition of using O for rings in number theory, which was based on Dedekind's term for a ring: order, or rather Ordnung in German. He wrote fraktur o a lot in his work. | |
| May 16, 2010 at 8:54 | comment | added | ogerard | I used to believe that the O came as the geometrical approximation of a physical ring, from the local ring idea. | |
| Jan 22, 2010 at 21:40 | comment | added | Martin Brandenburg | finally I know why this letter is used :) | |
| Dec 11, 2009 at 17:27 | history | edited | Kevin H. Lin | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Dec 11, 2009 at 4:13 | comment | added | Yuhao Huang | This is new for me!! cool!! | |
| Dec 9, 2009 at 14:03 | history | edited | Kevin H. Lin | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Dec 9, 2009 at 10:17 | comment | added | user717 | Great! I always wondered where this comes from. | |
| Dec 9, 2009 at 3:11 | history | answered | Kevin H. Lin | CC BY-SA 2.5 |