question is, Why is it that the letter X represents the 2 unknown? Now I know we learned that in math class, but now 3 it's everywhere in the culture -- The X prize, the X-Files, 4 Project X, TEDx. Where'd that come from? 5 About six years ago I decided that I would learn Arabic, 6 which turns out to be a supremely logical language. To 7 write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like 8 Notes: crafting an equation, because every part is extremely 9 precise and carries a lot of information. That's one of the 10 reasons so much of what we've come to think of as Western 11 science and mathematics and engineering was really 12 worked out in the first few centuries of the Common Era by 13 the Persians and the Arabs and the Turks. 14 This includes the little system in Arabic called al-jebra. 15 And al-jebr roughly translates to "the system for reconciling 16 disparate parts." Al-jebr finally came into English as 17 algebra. One example among many. 18 The Arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom 19 finally made their way to Europe --which is to say Spain -- in 20 the 11th and 12th centuries. And when they arrived there 21 was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a 22 European language. 23 But there were problems. One problem is there are 24 some sounds in Arabic that just don't make it through a 25 European voice box without lots of practice. Trust me on 26
2 question is, Why is it that the letter X represents the 3 unknown? Now I know we learned that in math class, but now 4 it's everywhere in the culture -- The X prize, the X-Files, 5 Project X, TEDx. Where'd that come from? 6 About six years ago I decided that I would learn Arabic, 7 which turns out to be a supremely logical language. To 8 write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like Notes: 9 crafting an equation, because every part is extremely 10 precise and carries a lot of information. That's one of the 11 reasons so much of what we've come to think of as Western 12 science and mathematics and engineering was really 13 worked out in the first few centuries of the Common Era by 14 the Persians and the Arabs and the Turks. 15 This includes the little system in Arabic called al-jebra. 16 And al-jebr roughly translates to "the system for reconciling 17 disparate parts." Al-jebr finally came into English as 18 algebra. One example among many. 19 The Arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom 20 finally made their way to Europe --which is to say Spain -- in 21 the 11th and 12th centuries. And when they arrived there 22 was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a 23 European language. 24 But there were problems. One problem is there are 25 some sounds in Arabic that just don't make it through a 26 European voice box without lots of practice. Trust me on
Fluency_Packet_6-8.docx