Questions tagged [terminology]
For questions about terms, definitions and related concepts used in science and mathematics.
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When was the function 1 + cos(x), aka the vercosine, given a name?
Nowadays, when one searches for little-known trigonometric functions, one usually finds a list containing the versine, coversine, vercosine, and covercosine. When using this list, $1+\cos(x)$ is given ...
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Where did the term "set-builder notation" come from?
In math stack exchange I often see notations like $\{x\in\mathbb Q:x^2<2\}$ being called instances of set builder notation. When I went to school we (that is, I, my fellow students, my teachers, ...
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When did the names of scientists first become the names of scientific units?
Many scientific units are named after scientists, for example,
Tesla for magnetic flux
Farad for capacitance
Newton for force.
When did the tradition of naming scientific units begin?
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How was the term speed treated in the 16th and 17th centuries?
What did people in the 16th and 17th centuries mean by the term speed? Did they have
$$\text{speed} = \frac{ \text{distance} }{ \text{time} }$$
back then? Or did they have some other notion of speed ...
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Why is the thermoelectric figure of merit denoted by $ZT$?
Why is the thermoelectric figure of merit denoted by $Z T$? Does $Z T$ come from the abbreviation of words in some language?
Update: So far, $T$ has been figured out — it is the temperature, to make ...
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What caused the name change from "analysis situs" to "topology"?
J. Alexander's 1926 paper, Combinatorial Analysis Situs, doesn't refer to the field as combinatorial topology.
He mentions that combinatorial analysis situs is concerned with topological invariants ...
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Jordan called isomorphisms (iso.) and homomorphisms "iso. holoedriques" and "iso. meriedriques" respectively; translation of holoe/meried-driques?
Stillwell mentions in his Elements of Algebra:
The first to use the term "isomorphism" was Jordan, in his Traite des Substitutions [1870], the first textbook on group theory...Jordan used the word "...
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Why is the Heaviside step function named after Heaviside?
The Heaviside step function is usually defined as
$$
\theta(x)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll}0&\text{if }x<0\\\tfrac12&\text{if }x=0\\1&\text{if }x>0.\\\end{array}\right.
$$
It is ...
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History of the definition of Injective & Surjective Function
I'm a college student, just beginning to study Elementary Set Theory. In studying about the definition of injective and surjective function, out of curiosity, it came to my mind a question about the ...
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Why is differentiation under the integral sign named the Leibniz rule?
The question here asked why differentiation under the integral sign is named "Feynman's trick". That is a comparatively recent name for the method. Aside from the name "differentiation under the ...
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What is the etymology of the mathematical terms "sheaf, stalk, germ"?
The peculiar agricultural terminology commonly used in algebraic geometry and category theory, "sheaf", "stalk", "germ", is quite well-known. A sheaf is pictured as something like a bundle of stalks, ...
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Why is a time series not called a time sequence?
In pure mathematics, a sequence is a list of terms, for instance $1, \frac12, \frac14, \dots, \frac{1}{2^k},\dots$, and a series is the sum of an infinite sequence, for instance $\sum_{k=1}^\infty \...
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Origin of Gauss-Newton method
The Gauss-Newton method can be derived from Newton's method, but I am unable to see how Gauss was linked with this method. It seems unlikely that he himself worked on the method, but I am at a loss.
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Why is the existential quantifier symbol ∃ a backwards "E"?
Peano introduced a number of logical symbols still used today:
$∨$ (from Latin vel)
$∧$ (inverted $∨$)
$∃$
This inversion of Latin letters as symbols (and inversion of symbols to signify their '...
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Origin of the term 'index of a subgroup'
The index of a subgroup $H$ in a group $G$ is the number of distinct cosets of $H$ in $G$.
Why did someone decide to call this an 'index'?
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What is the etymology of "phase space" of a dynamical system?
The state space of a dynamical system is often called a "phase space". What is the etymology of this?
(Note that I'm not asking about the history of the concept, but rather about the history of the ...
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Who in history coined the term "character" of a group and why is it called so?
I first read the term in an introduction of Fourier transform on locally compact groups. In this article on Character of a group from Encyclopedia of Mathematics, a character of a group is defined as ...
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Who coined the term “machine learning”?
A lot of sources attribute the definition to Arthur Samuel (1959), "the field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed", but none of these sources ...
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First time the unique factorization theorem was called FTA
First of all, a comment, before this gets marked as a duplicate:
I have searched this website for the question I’m asking and I’m aware that this exact question has been asked before. However, Eric ...
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What animals or plants were used to illustrate ideas of physics?
This crossed my mind today...
There is Schrödinger's cat and Newton's apple.
Are there any other famous animals/plants featured in physics in a similar way?
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Why were equivalence classes named classes rather than sets?
If $R\subseteq A\times A$ is an equivalence relation (i.e., a relation that is reflexive on $A$, symmetric, and transitive), then for each element $x\in A$, the subset $[x]_R=\{y\in A: \langle x,y\...
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Etymology of certain terms in the theory of elliptic integrals
In the theory of elliptic integrals, one encounters the terms "amplitude" and "modular angle" in relation to incomplete integrals of the first kind, which are two variables that denote the upper limit ...
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What was Lebesgue's original definition of a measurable set?
I found an interesting question on Math SE asked by @Dilemian that seems more on topic here, and since it lacks answers there I thought to post it here so that it can receive good answers here.
There ...
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Why is kinetic energy denoted by the letter $T$ in quantum mechanics?
Kinetic energy is often written as $K$, $KE$ or $E_k$. Where does $T$ come from in quantum mechanics? Why and how did it come to be different?
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Is there a reason $⊑$ in CSP is analogous to $⊇$ (as opposed to $⊆$)?
The 'square' subset symbols are sometimes used to express analogous concepts to subsets, like prefixes or suffixes.
However their use in CSP seems to be counterintuitive to their shape: $⊑$ appears ...
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Why did Linnaeus equate the phoenix, the mythical bird, with Phoenix, a palm genus?
I've been reading about the "paradoxa" section of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, where he debunk some of the more far fetched ideas about animals.
Wikipedia includes this translation of what ...
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What is the first usage of the term "Adjoint" and why was this word chosen?
The term "Adjoint" appears in many different mathematical areas and for sometimes seemingly different kinds of things. Wikipedia says -- "In mathematics, the term adjoint applies in several ...
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Who first gave a definition of congruent triangles?
Who was the first to define congruent triangles? I couldn't find the definition in Euclid's Elements.
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History of "independent and dependent variables"
I have a lot of questions that can be summed up by "whats the history of independent and dependent variables?" Here is a list of those questions:
Where does our conception of independent and ...
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Who started calling the matrix multiplication "multiplication"?
As I searched for linear algebra, I found it odd that the linear map composition corresponds to the multiplication of matrices. Considering the intuition that the repetition of addition is ...
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How did the terms stress and strain come to describe two different things?
In physics, stress essentially captures forces in a body, where as strain captures displacements. Two dimensionally very different concepts. If you look it up in a thesaurus, stress and strain are ...
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History of Path algebras
I want some references that point the inventor of Path algebras and history/evolution of these algebras from the first idea. If possible.
I tried to search in many different places, but all times, ...
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When did non-SI double prefixes go out of use?
In old physics and engineering publications from the 1950s or so, it's common to see non-SI "double prefixes", such as a "millimicrosecond pulse", or a "10 micromicrofarad" capacitor.
These units are ...
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Why are revolutions per minute (RPM) still used instead of hertz (Hz)?
When did people start using Revolutions per Minute (RPM) to measure motors, engines, other devices and where did the term originate? Why do we continue to use it instead of an SI unit like Hz?
From ...
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Where does the notion of "three crises of mathematics" come from? [duplicate]
Update: It can be traced back to Fraenkel-Bar-Hillel's Foundations of Set Theory, originally published in 1958. Further discussions can be seen at the linked question.
The notion of "three crises ...
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Usage of terms prior and posterior in probability
Probability function is of two types in general. They are unconditional probability and conditional probability.
But the terms prior probability and posterior probability are used in place of ...
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Why was 'ordinate' adopted to signify y-coordinate?
The OED doesn't expound what semantic notions underlie y-coordinate and the Latin etymon.
Etymology: < classical Latin ōrdinātus orderly, regular, regulated, (in geometry) in alignment, ...
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Who wrote down minus times minus is equal to plus? [duplicate]
I am not here to ask why "minus times minus is plus", this is a basic arithmetic fact. The related question most people ask is: why does $-\times-=+$. Of, course there may be several explanations for ...
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Origin of the "law of quadratic reciprocity"
Today, "reciprocity" is the standard mathematical word used for quadratic reciprocity and its generalizations.
I found that the name dates back to no later than 1832, when a paper of Dirichlet (...
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Dimension of the candela unit: What does J stand for?
The J symbol can represent the unit of energy but it's also the symbol for the dimension of the candela (or luminous intensity).
For the energy unit, it clearly comes from the family name of the ...
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Conventional orientation of axes in scientific plots
In an answer to a programming question, I included the following:
The default behavior of [library function in question that displays an image] is to put the origin of the coordinate system in the ...
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Why was Indicial equations named so?
In ODE, in Frobenius method, there's an equation called "Indicial Equation." Is there any particular contextual/historical reason that it is named so?
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Who came up with R for the universal gas constant?
I never did find an answer from professors, or even see an acknowledgement in textbooks, on why capital-letter-r is invariably used to represent the constant 0.08206 L-atm/mol-K seen in chemistry ...
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How did the use of the word "origin" become commonplace in geometry?
My understanding is that in Cartesian geometry, all coordinate axes of an n-dimensional space may intersect at one point. I would like to know how that point--whether (0, 0), (0,0,0), ... -- came to ...
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Why is the meaning of "linear" different in school and college use?
Is the map $y=2x+3$ linear?
"Of course it is." -- a high school teacher will answer.
"Nope; it's affine, but not linear." -- a college student will contradict.
This difference terminology that ...
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What is the status of the three crises in the history of mathematics?
I have seen a claim in some literature that there are three crises in the history of mathematics. The first is the discovery of $\sqrt2$ being irrational in Greek time which shook the belief that ...
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When did the term "order" come into use as the highest exponent in an expansion?
Answer(s) to the question What is a 3rd-order Fresnel lens? are disappointing to me, in that the term 3rd order does not refer to anything like a third-order series expansion.
But this leads me to a ...
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How is the word kernel associated with distributions?
I am trying to rationalize the meaning of the term kernel, especially when it is associated with distributions. The English and German etymology all show that the literal meaning is corn (English) and ...
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Origin and use of the adjective "improper" in mathematics
Anybody with elementary mathematical education will have seen improper fractions to refer to fractions where the numerator is greater than or equal to the denominator.
At a certain point in calculus ...
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Origin of the expression “Fundamental theorem of Algebra”
Who was the first person to use the expression “Fundamental theorem of Algebra”? It is well-known that Gauss called it “Fundamental theorem of algebraic equations”. Grattan-Guiness, in his The Rainbow ...
