Algebra

[tkowal]

The city of Khiva was known in the past under the name of Khwarizm, whence the name Al-Khwarismi. It is located in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan. Another word with the same origin is Algorism.

[Slava]

Thanks for the short lesson. I remember learning that many words beginning with al are from Arabic, but it's always nice to learn more about individuals.

[damoge]

very cool! thanks for that! couldn't see how it related to Khiva...

[Perry Lassiter]

The word reminds me of Pogo whose characters always called it al-zebra. I've also been known to comment to people lost in acronyms of bureaucracy that I don't speak algebra.

[damoge]

Perry,
That's a goodun! May I use it?

[LukeJavan8]

Yeah, me too! I failed miserably at Algebra. And saw
my Algebra teacher forty years after the last class, and
so enjoyed telling him I still had not ever used it.
X + Y - headache.

[damoge]

Luke, looks like you proved your point! You're algebraic equation is missing something!!!

[LukeJavan8]

Told you I failed miserably. And I'm not going to
try and fix it. It's been many decades, why try now?

[damoge]

No argument from me... Lots of rough edges here I've decided to just live with.

[Philip Hudson]

Having, among other degrees, an MS in mathematics, I regard algebra fondly. I taught high school and college algebra for a few years. I still tutor algebra occasionally. In later life, I tutored my sister by telephone in College Algebra. She made an A. If one doesn't use it one loses it.

[LukeJavan8]

Same with anything. I read French to keep up, though
only getting French films help with the language spoken.
Fondly, however, is not a word I would use for algebra.
Glad it brought you joy, for me the word was anguish.

[Perry Lassiter]

Sure, damoge, feel free. Anyone can feel free to use anything I post. I wouldn't put anything private on social media.

Actually, I have many times used the simplest Algebra 1 stuff to find an unknown. It's much the easiest way.

[Philip Hudson]

The height of a building can be determined by algebra, with the help from geometry and astronomy and the use of shadows.

Be sure you can measure the shadow of the building. Place a one foot ruler vertically into the sunlight near the building to be measured. Measure the length of the ruler's shadow in feet. Call it RS for ruler shadow. Then measure the length of the building's shadow in feet. Call it BS for building shadow.
Call the unknown height of the building X.
Then, by using the theorem of similar right triangles (geometry). Write:
X/1 = BS/RS.
Remember 1 is the height of the ruler.
Since any number divide by one is itself, replace X/1 with X to get:
X=BS/RS
Suppose the ruler's shadow is 2 feet. Suppose the building shadow is 40 feet, just to make arithmetic simple.The arithmetic becomes:
X = 40/2 = 20 which is the height of the building in feet.

Now that wasn't difficult was it?

Here is a hard one: There was steam ship that had a new boiler installed at some time in the past. At this time the ship is twice as old as its boiler was when the ship was as old as the boiler is now. The combined age of the ship and the boiler is thirty years. How old is the ship and how old is its boiler? I'm not going to show you how to work this one out. But, being a classic problem, it is on the Internet more than once. See: http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/quest ... the-boiler

Back in my high school teaching days, I was assigned to a school with a math department head who was not nearly as good as any of the other math teachers. Actually he was a failure at his profession, I was assigned to this school by the superintendent of a large city school district as my punishment for being, shall we say, not as cooperative as he thought a teacher should be. I posed the above problem to the head of the department and he had no idea how to solve it. Because of that and other valid reasons, I resigned my post and became a systems engineer in industry. It was a good move. succeeded.

[call_copse]

As a developer, algebra is at the foundation of everything one does (not for all types of developers, of course, but for those who work with algorithms and procedures like myself). For example, once I parse the slightly confusing sentences of the boiler example, the answer less needs to be worked, than simply appears in my head.

[Philip Hudson]

Bravo Ian. Yes, the wording is a part of the ship and boiler problem.

Since my profession was that of a systems engineer, I actually had little direct use for higher mathematics in my work. But the application guys did, big time. While I was collecting seismic data world wide and presenting it in a meaningful form to the powers that be, the seismologists were busy with all sorts of mathematical algorithms, digesting the raw data for presentation.