Where and When Did the Symbols "+" and "–" Originate?

Post by otibom » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 9:52 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #3

adamnemecek wrote: post #2

This always amazed me: "A Jewish tradition that dates from at least the 19th century is to write plus using a symbol like an inverted T. This practice was adopted into Israeli schools (this practice goes back to at least the 1940s)[11] and is still commonplace today in elementary schools (including secular schools) but in fewer secondary schools.[12] It is also used occasionally in books by religious authors, but mos…

And the symbol for the 4 cardinal directions (like on a map) gets written as: ⊕ (A circled plus.)

Post by abrahamsen » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 10:25 AM UTC

Post by The_Yayo » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 10:43 AM UTC

znowi wrote: post #8

pavlov wrote: post #5

What fascinates me most about this story is how it illustrates what a young race we humans are intellectually. If we ever want to be anything more than warring tribes, we must learn to accumulate knowledge together. Universal symbols for addition and substraction are the first small step on that very long road, yet it's only been a few hundred years since we took that step. On the scale of the universe, we are like a…

On the scale of the universe we're virtually non-existent :)

Post by chinpokomon » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 11:15 AM UTC

xerula wrote: post #12

znowi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the scale of the universe we're virtually non-existent :)

On the temporal / spatial scale of the universe we are virtually non-existent. On a scale that ranks everything in the universe according to physical / informational complexity & organization, we appear so far to be quite significant.

Post by mich41 » Wed, Mar 13, 2013, 11:21 AM UTC

abrahamsen wrote: post #13

Kind of weird that no consensus have emerged for multiplication (·, ×, *, or horizontal juxtaposition) or division (÷, /, or vertical juxtaposition with horizontal line between) yet.