History of equations and functions

The history of equations and functions is as follows:

In ancient Egyptian papyrus, the idea of using equations has appeared. The ancient Babylonians already knew how to list equations and used some basic symbols to represent unknown and known numbers. In China, the word "equation" was mentioned in Zhou Li of the Zhou Dynasty, which is considered as the meaning of making formulas in mathematics. There are also records about the equation in Guanzi during the Warring States Period.

In Europe, Diophantine, an ancient Greek mathematician, began to express unknowns with letters, which was an important milestone in the development of equations. In the Middle Ages, with the development of algebra, the concept of equation gradually matured. /kloc-in the 6th century, with the appearance of various mathematical symbols, especially after the French mathematician Veda created systematic symbols representing unknown quantities and known quantities, the special concept of "equation with unknowns" was gradually formed.

/kloc-in the 0/7th century, Leibniz began to use the word function to express the functional relationship of a quantity. /kloc-in the 8th century, Euler began to use the function symbol f(x) to express the functional relationship of a quantity. Generally speaking, the historical development of equations and functions has gone through many stages, from the initial simple symbolic representation to the complex mathematical concepts, which play a vital role in the field of mathematics.

meaning

An equation refers to an equation containing unknowns. It is an equation that represents the equal relationship between two mathematical expressions (such as two numbers, functions, quantities and operations), and the value of the unknown quantity that makes the equation hold is called "solution" or "root". The process of finding the solution of the equation is called "solving the equation".

By solving the equation, we can avoid the difficulty of reverse thinking and directly list the equations with the quantity to be solved. There are many forms of equations, such as one-dimensional linear equation, two-dimensional linear equation, one-dimensional quadratic equation and so on. , can also be combined into equations to solve multiple unknowns.

In mathematics, an equation is a statement containing one or more variables. Solving an equation involves determining which variables have values that make the equation valid. Variables are also called unknowns, and the value of the unknowns satisfying the equation is called the solution of the equation.