History of Science and Math Stack Exchange
History of Science and Math Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [mathematics]

For questions about the quantitative study of topics such as numbers, structure, space, and change, carried out by investigating patterns

If the concerned question is about a more specific area of Mathematics (such as , , , etc.), this tag should be used along with the tag of that specific area of Mathematics.

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Which came first, the natural logarithm or the base of the natural logarithm?

The natural logarithm function ($\ln x$) and the base of the natural logarithm function ($e$) are both extremely useful. They're also both closely related: $\ln (e^x)=x$, and $e^{\ln x}=x$. But which came first? I would think it's likely they were…
HDE 226868
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Current ways of thinking in the History of Mathematics

As a research mathematician, working in number theory, who is interested in the history of his own field, I have done some reading in the History of Mathematics, particularly that of Ancient Greek and Hellenistic mathematics. When I compare the way…
R.P.
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Has any 'difficult' proof ever been superseded by a 'simple' one?

Let's take an obvious example. I'm sure that amateur mathematicians (and some professionals) will continue to search for Fermat's 'marvellous proof' of his Last Theorem. This is despite the fact that Andrew Wiles has proved the assertion using much…
Ima Guest
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Historically, how did people define multiplication for negative numbers?

Which were the first mathematical developments to state that the product of two negative numbers is a positive number, and what was their justification for this choice? I am not interested in a modern explanation for why this choice is sensible, but…
Arthur Azevedo De Amorim
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What was the historical context of the development of Taylor series?

I knew about linear approximations, quadratic approximations and the use of Taylor polynomials to approximate a function. Furthermore, I was aware of other applications of Taylor polynomials and the intuition behind them from this link. As far as I…
shahed al mamun
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Where were mathematical/science works posted before the arxiv website?

Arxiv website is very good at collecting mathematical/science work updates. However, where were mathematical/science work updates posted before arxiv website existed?
Maxx Woods
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Secrecy in Mathematics

I've been told that Pythagoreans kept as a secret the incommensurability of certain quantities like the diagonal of the square. Are there other mathematical discoveries whose authors didn't want the public to learn or know about?
Leandro Caniglia
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When was the "Law of Propagation of Error" first stated?

This is my first time posting on HSM, so please bear with me if it's off-topic. I can move it to Stats.SE or Mathematics.SE if necessary. A widely cited 1966 paper (with currently 1030 citations) mentions the "law of propagation of error" but does…
Nike Dattani
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When were numbers first used for anything other than counting?

The most obvious occurrence of numbers in nature are the counting (natural) numbers, as they describe how many of something there are. It took a long time for people to even realize that the numbers extended to zero and the non-integers, and even…
ApproachingDarknessFish
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Origin of the concept of dimension?

When and how did the concept of dimension first emerge — the realisation that there is some “3-ness” about the world we live in, an analogous “2-ness” about the surface of a table, and “1-ness” about a line? Certainly it must have become clear once…
Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine
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When and why did powers come to be called 'exponents'?

(This question was first asked here. I modified it and moved it here based on some suggestions.) I have some difficulty in understanding the complex exponential function. So I decide to review the good old exponent function which I learned long…
smwikipedia
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What was the notion of limit that Newton used?

I have read that the notion of limit became rigorous two centuries after the discover of calculus What Newton had in his mind regarding the notion of limit?
veronika
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When was the earliest use of log-log plots to demonstrate power-law behavior?

After reading this answer and writing this comment, I decided to ask this question: When and where was the earliest known use of a log-log plot to demonstrate power-law behavior?
uhoh
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What is the shortest paper in the history of mathematics?

Now-a-days a research paper can have many pages (the paper claiming the proof of abc conjecture is of $500$ pages long!). But is there any paper in the history of mathematics which we can say as the shortest paper ever published in a well-known…
Kushal Bhuyan
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Concept of a function and Idea of a formula as a function

Enderton Elements of Set Theory, p. 43 (1977, Academic Press), writes: There was a reluctance to separate the concept of a function itself from the idea of a written formula defining the function. What is the basis for the above historical claim?…
user67
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