Question

1. Describe the origin of exponents in 2-3 paragraphs

(please cite)

Answer 1

Origin of exponents :

The word itself comes from Latin, expo, meaning out of, and ponere, meaning place. While the word exponent came to mean different things, the first recorded modern use of exponent in mathematics was in a book called "Arithemetica Integra", written in 1544 by English author and mathematician Michael Stifel. But he was working simply with a base of two, so the exponent 3 would mean the number of 2s you would need to multiply to get 8. It would look like this 2³ = 8. The way Stifel woud say it is kind of backwards when compared to the way we think about it today. He would say "3 is the 'setting out' of 8". Today, we would refer the equation simply as 2 cubed. Remember, he was working exclusively with a base or factor of 2 and translating from Latin a little more literally than we do today.

While not 100 percent certain, it appears the idea of squaring or cubing goes all the way back to Babylonian times. Babylon was part of Mesopotamia in the area we now would consider Iraq. The earliest know mention of Babylon is found on a tablet dating to the 23rd Century BC. And they were screwing around with the concept of exponents even then, although their numbering system (Sumerian, now a dead language) uses symbols to demote mathematical formulas. Oddly, they didn't know what to do with the number 0. So that was delineated by a space between the symbols.