title
macrohistory.com

home | ancient world

SUPPLEMENT

(use back button)

Algebra and Redundancy

Redundancy pervades our lives. It is often found in writing, as in "she is a popular music singer."  Taking the redundancy out of this statement we have: "she is a popular singer."

Algebra takes the redundancy out of numeric values. Its purpose is to simplify. With algebra one merely does to one side of an equals sign what he does to the other side. For example, if 2x is said to equal 10y, one divides both sides of the equation by 2, making x=5y. Scholars speak of elementary algebra, abstract algebra and various other kinds of algebra, but it is all merely removing redundancy.

Copyright © 2006-2010 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.