Why is 'x' the unknown?
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0:01 - 0:04I have the answer to a question that we've all asked.
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0:04 - 0:05The question is,
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0:05 - 0:08Why is it that the letter X
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0:08 - 0:10represents the unknown?
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0:10 - 0:13Now I know we learned that in math class,
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0:13 - 0:14but now it's everywhere in the culture --
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0:14 - 0:17The X prize, the X-Files,
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0:17 - 0:21Project X, TEDx.
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0:21 - 0:23Where'd that come from?
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0:23 - 0:24About six years ago
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0:24 - 0:27I decided that I would learn Arabic,
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0:27 - 0:31which turns out to be a supremely logical language.
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0:31 - 0:33To write a word or a phrase
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0:33 - 0:35or a sentence in Arabic
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0:35 - 0:37is like crafting an equation,
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0:37 - 0:40because every part is extremely precise
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0:40 - 0:42and carries a lot of information.
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0:42 - 0:44That's one of the reasons
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0:44 - 0:45so much of what we've come to think of
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0:45 - 0:49as Western science and mathematics and engineering
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0:49 - 0:52was really worked out in the first few centuries of the Common Era
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0:52 - 0:56by the Persians and the Arabs and the Turks.
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0:56 - 0:58This includes the little system in Arabic
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0:58 - 1:00called al-jebra.
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1:00 - 1:03And al-jebr roughly translates to
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1:03 - 1:07"the system for reconciling disparate parts."
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1:07 - 1:11Al-jebr finally came into English as algebra.
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1:11 - 1:13One example among many.
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1:13 - 1:17The Arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom
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1:17 - 1:19finally made their way to Europe --
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1:19 - 1:20which is to say Spain --
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1:20 - 1:22in the 11th and 12th centuries.
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1:22 - 1:23And when they arrived
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1:23 - 1:25there was tremendous interest
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1:25 - 1:27in translating this wisdom
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1:27 - 1:29into a European language.
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1:29 - 1:31But there were problems.
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1:31 - 1:32One problem
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1:32 - 1:35is there are some sounds in Arabic
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1:35 - 1:38that just don't make it through a European voice box
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1:38 - 1:40without lots of practice.
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1:40 - 1:42Trust me on that one.
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1:42 - 1:44Also, those very sounds
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1:44 - 1:46tend not to be represented
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1:46 - 1:50by the characters that are available in European languages.
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1:50 - 1:52Here's one of the culprits.
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1:52 - 1:54This is the letter sheen,
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1:54 - 1:57and it makes the sound we think of as SH -- "sh."
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1:57 - 2:00It's also the very first letter
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2:00 - 2:02of the word shayun,
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2:02 - 2:04which means "something"
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2:04 - 2:06just like the the English word "something" --
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2:06 - 2:09some undefined, unknown thing.
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2:09 - 2:10Now in Arabic,
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2:10 - 2:11we can make this definite
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2:11 - 2:14by adding the definite article "al."
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2:14 - 2:16So this is al-shayun --
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2:16 - 2:18the unknown thing.
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2:18 - 2:21And this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics,
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2:21 - 2:28such as this 10th-century derivation of roots.
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2:28 - 2:31The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars
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2:31 - 2:33who were tasked with translating this material
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2:33 - 2:38is that the letter sheen and the word shayun
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2:38 - 2:40can't be rendered into Spanish
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2:40 - 2:42because Spanish doesn't have that SH,
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2:42 - 2:44that "sh" sound.
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2:44 - 2:45So by convention,
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2:45 - 2:47they created a rule in which
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2:47 - 2:51they borrowed the CK sound, "ck" sound,
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2:51 - 2:53from the classical Greek
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2:53 - 2:56in the form of the letter Kai.
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2:56 - 2:58Later when this material was translated
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2:58 - 3:01into a common European language,
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3:01 - 3:03which is to say Latin,
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3:03 - 3:05they simply replaced the Greek Kai
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3:05 - 3:07with the Latin X.
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3:07 - 3:08And once that happened,
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3:08 - 3:11once this material was in Latin,
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3:11 - 3:14it formed the basis for mathematics textbooks
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3:14 - 3:17for almost 600 years.
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3:17 - 3:19But now we have the answer to our question.
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3:19 - 3:21Why is it that X is the unknown?
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3:21 - 3:23X is the unknown
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3:23 - 3:27because you can't say "sh" in Spanish.
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3:27 - 3:29(Laughter)
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3:29 - 3:32And I thought that was worth sharing.
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3:32 - 3:35(Applause)
- Title:
- Why is 'x' the unknown?
- Speaker:
- Terry Moore
- Description:
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Why is 'x' the symbol for an unknown? In this short and funny talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 03:57
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Why is 'x' the unknown? | ||
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