Why Do Math with Letters?

Why Do Math with Letters? — page 3 — THE ART OF ALGEBRA MATHEMATICIAN MUHAMMAD IBN MUSA AL-KHWARIZMI ADVANCED ALGEBRAIC STUDY ONCE YOU STARTED GETTING THE HANG OF ADDITION subtraction multiplication and division with numbers your teach er probably threw you a curveball all of a sudden there were letters in your homework If you have never seen such an equation here is an example 4 3x 1 14 What was your reaction the first time you saw something like that You may have thought you were seeing things Perhaps your teacher had written a crooked plus sign Maybe you were just confused Sometimes problems that use variables which are letters that represent unknown quantities can look like a strange language How are you supposed to know what to do with them Your teacher would tell you not to worry there are rules that 4 3X-1 14 6

Why Do Math with Letters? — page 4

Why Do Math with Letters? — page 5 — help you do this type of math called algebra Algebra is all about taking a strange-looking equation and ma nipulating the letters and numbers so that you can determine the value of something that is unknown Algebra was developed in the 7th century by Arab mathematicians who were looking to make math work in their lives Just as ancient Greek mathematicians were drawn to geometry many of the Arabs chose to work more with algebraic concepts because of the strong connections to their everyday work One such Arab mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi made a living out of calculating what people would inherit from relatives who had passed away This type of work can involve many variables such as gender religion or relationship to the deceased Al Khwarizmi became the first person to formalize the process of solving for unknowns cepts from his work to write a book explaining how to do calculations through balancing equations This book set up many of the formal In 830 al-Khwarizmi used con 8

Why Do Math with Letters? — page 6 — rules of working with equations the very rules you learn in school Al-Khwarizmi laid out these rules by solving many different equations The title of his book included the word al-jabr which is the root for the English word algebra Al-Khwarizmi did not use the letter x in his book though In fact he didn’t use any variables Anytime he wanted to represent an unknown quantity he would write the word shai which is Arabic for thing For example he would have written the previous example problem 4 3x 1 14 as four times the quantity of one less than three times a thing is equal to fourteen Which problem looks easier to read and under stand Would you prefer to solve the one with the numbers or the one written out in words help make the process of solving equations clearer However it took approximately 700 years for this system to appear After al-Khwarizmi’s work was published it was translated into Latin so that other mathemati cians could study it At this time Latin was the universal language used by scholars for their studies In Latin the word for thing was translated as causa or cosa As it continued to reach other peoples such as the The notation system of using letters for variables was developed to SHAI WHICH IS ARABIC FOR THING 9

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