“Mathematical Signs"

“Mathematical Signs"



The importance of sign in our life is very clear from ancient times when words were not developed in any language in that time also people use to communicate and that was possible only with help of signs. It will not be wrong if we say that language is born from signs. Mathematics has its special place in our lives. Because people start counting…just after its birth...

This circle is not so simple to understand. But there are some means which make these things easy and those are mathematical signs. Here our main aim is to discuss the development of these signs.

These signs are use to represent work and to show relations between different mathematical numbers. In a/b the division sign (/) shows that a has to give a part to b (b divides a) and in a
In ancient hand written Granths many symbols are used but with passage of time these are same what changed and after many changes these are presented in today’s form.

Plus and Minus Signs:-

Nearly in 1960’s in the city of Bohemia there was a mathematician named Jauviderman. He wrote books on Arithmetic’s and algebra. He used the signs + and – for the first time in a book. He did not use these signs for addition and subtraction. In spite of that he used signs on behavioral bundles, to show that each bundle is more than or less than a particular fix quantity.

Sign of equality:- The sign of quality was used by Roit Recorde in 1557. He used this sign in a book of algebra ‘Behterstone of bit’ for first time. In the same book he wrote ,”I use these signs in an equation because no two things in whole world will be as equal as these two lines (=).”


Sign of Multiplication: - The sign of multiplication (X) was first time used by British mathematician Willam outred in 1631. In England people started using this sign (X) for multiplication but other countries used dot(.) as sign of multiplication

Sign of Division:- The sign of division (/) was first time used in a book of algebra written by John H. Ryan of Switzerland in 1659. This sign has prevailed in Great British and US. But other countries were using (: ) as a sign of division.

Decimal sign: - The sign of decimal was first time used by mathematician Sieman steven of Holland in his book of arithmetic’s which was published in 1585 in Leedan.In his book
; for example he wrote 173 429/1000

like this: 173. 4 (1) 2 (2) 9 (3)

this equation means that –

173 × (1/10) º + 4 × (1/10)¹ + 2 × (1/10)² + 9 × (1/10)³


Use of:-

First time use of was done by Nicole Orem (1323-1382), the mathematician of France, in his book Algorithm proportion. He wrote 7½ or 5½ like this:





½ 7 OR ½ 5