Abstract
Mathematics, even more than science, employs symbols. (A famous quote states that ‘mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper’.) It’s difficult to imagine doing mathematics without using symbols. Although one can write a sentence such as ‘one plus one is equal to two’ it’s simpler and quicker to write 1 + 1 = 2. When you start to make slightly more complicated calculations, such as [(2 + 3) × √9]2 = 225, you realise what a boon symbolic notation is: writing this calculation using words would take up a paragraph. And some people, of course, operate at levels far beyond mere arithmetic.
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Webb, S. (2018). Meaningless marks on paper. In: Clash of Symbols. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71350-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71350-2_5
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71350-2
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