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Maths in the Early Islamic World

In Our Time

CHAPTER

Algebra Is Not All About Symbols

Exewy symbolic algebra is a way of doing things more efficiently. The greeks were very much, you know, at the abstract thinking a lot of their geometry. They coud how did they get to the algebra to do that, they were already doing quite well with words. That had to wait for people like descarte a er. So they were writing everything rhetorically, everything in prose. And that didn't slow them down in terms of doing algebra. But now we can use mathematics to solve real practical problems,. issues like dividing up land or for irrigation, or or sorting out your taxes running a huge empire.

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