“The beauty of symbolic equations is that it’s much easier to … see a problem at a glance”: How we moved from words and pictures to thinking symbolically

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For many, the idea of math will bring back endless hours of formulas and equations at school. So it may seem hard to imagine, but there once was a time when arithmetic didn't exist. Of course, there was still the need to use complex computations to solve real-world problems, but it wasn't until Muhammad ibn-­Mūsā al-­Khwārizmī, the so-called "father of algebra," established the fundamentals for solving equations that we began to set the foundations for modern mathematics. In this excerpt from her new book " Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation ", mathematician Robyn Arianrhod explores...