Timeline for History question - why h in the definition of derivative?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 27, 2012 at 15:25 | vote | accept | Jeff McGowan | ||
| Apr 26, 2012 at 19:32 | answer | added | Papiro | timeline score: 17 | |
| Feb 1, 2012 at 15:12 | comment | added | Jeff McGowan | Curiouser and curiouser - one assumes that Cauchy's use of i didn't catch on for the obvious reason. Perhaps Mariano is right, and h is just luck of the draw, someone not long after Cauchy didn't want to use i and chose h as the letter preceding it (so I guess we could just as easily have ended up with j). Maybe it was first used in a popular calculus "textbook" from the late 19th Century. Thanks for the interesting responses - Suvrit, your explanation reminds me of why 17 is the first really interesting number :-) | |
| Feb 1, 2012 at 10:26 | comment | added | Emil Jeřábek | @Pietro: H was not mute in Latin, it is only mute in modern Italian pronunciation of Latin. See e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin#Phonology and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_spelling_and_pronunciation . | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 21:33 | comment | added | Suvrit | a, b, c are boring; d is for derivative, e is already taken, f and g are functions, so that leaves h as the first usable letter ;-) | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 21:30 | comment | added | Pietro Majer | A conjecture. The letter h (especially at the beginning of a word) has just the small effect of aspiration. In Latin, it is even mute, like e.g. in the English word honour, of Latin origin). So, h seems a natural choice for denoting a quantity that is small or tends to $0.$ | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 20:45 | comment | added | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez | And $h$ immediately precedes $i$ in the alphabet! | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 20:34 | history | edited | José Hdz. Stgo. |
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| Jan 31, 2012 at 20:32 | history | edited | José Hdz. Stgo. |
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| Jan 31, 2012 at 19:02 | comment | added | Joseph O'Rourke | As you can see from the Cauchy clip at the MO question, "Why do we use $\epsilon$ and $\delta$?" (mathoverflow.net/questions/82302), the $h$ was not universal in 1850: Cauchy uses $i$ instead. | |
| Jan 31, 2012 at 18:14 | history | asked | Jeff McGowan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |