I’m taking a course on Udacity (Computer Science 101) to learn Python and simply learn coding as best as I could. Even though I have over 6 years of coding experience, it’s surprising how much I learnt by simply absorbing information like a sponge.

In one of the discussion forums on Udacity, someone mentioned why the variables that we select are nearly always “X” – why do we even solve for X? This question blew my mind, and I went out to search for answers and stumbled upon this video from TED:

This information was so fascinating and interesting! So much history and story behind the science of Algebra that I decided to create a simple infographics on why we use “X” as the unknown.

It’s wonderful to see how information traveled in the past. It is stated by both the TED video and information on research sites that it traveled via scholarly and/or trade means. But that brings out more questions, who were the scholars that visited different regions in order to learn about Algebra? Who was the Spanish mathematician that translated the “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing”. I guess that needs another set of infographics!

Hope you enjoy the video and the infographics!