Element symbol: indicates a number, such as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Operation symbols: add+,subtract-,multiply ×, divide-,fractional line-.
Relational symbols: equal sign =, greater than sign >, less than sign.
Convention symbol: decimal point
Attribute symbols and auxiliary symbols: parentheses ()
Let's share with you the historical sources of several important symbols.
(1) About "+"and "-".
The formation of mathematical symbols has generally gone through three stages: literary form (or written form, literary form), abbreviated form (simplified form, abbreviated form) and finally accepted concise symbol form. The same is true of the history of+and "one". With the development of mathematical symbol system, Germans introduced "+"and "-"in15th century. It is said that it draws lessons from business practices. Wine merchants sell vats of wine, and the horizontal line indicates that vats of wine are reduced; When the wine in the barrel is restored to its original state, add a vertical line to the horizontal line drawn in front, indicating that the wine that was originally taken away has been replenished. As a result, when reducing wine, that is, when pouring wine, the "-"symbol appears; Add wine, that is, when adding wine to people, the symbol "+"appears. German mathematician Weidemann is considered to have used "+"and "-"for the first time in his works.
(2) About "X" and "∫".
163 1 year, the British mathematician Oughtred created many mathematical symbols in his book Keys to Mathematics (also translated as Introduction to Mathematics and Keys to Mathematics), in order to get rid of complicated mathematical formulas, in which "X" was used for the first time to represent the multiplication of two numbers, which is the modern multiplication symbol, and then "X" was used. It is a special addition, but it is different from addition, so the plus sign is written. Nowadays, the division symbol is called the Lahn symbol, and it is generally believed that it was quoted as a division symbol in an algebra book published by J.H. Rehn in Switzerland in 1659. At first, this symbol was not popular in Switzerland and other European countries. It was not until 1668 that the English version of his book became popular and widely adopted. Regarding the divisor invented by Ryan, some people speculated that when he was doing division, there was no symbol to indicate the symbol of dividing an integer into several parts, so he separated two points with a short horizontal line (which can be considered as a negative sign) to show the meaning of decomposition, and vividly showed the relationship between division and subtraction.
(3) About "=".
Reckord, a British mathematician, added a straight line to the dash, and two parallel straight lines were used to indicate equality. Ray vividly said: "I put two parallel lines-twins of equal length, because nothing can be more equal than them." Since then, this pair of parallel lines has been handed down slowly as a symbol of equality. Today, "=" has become a universal symbol. The first formula that primary school students come into contact with is equation, and the equation connected by equal sign represents an equivalent relationship. For example, a few plus a few equals 10, and a few plus a few equals 20. The inverse subtraction of addition involves equations. Previous studies have shown that children generally don't tend to think that "equality" means "as much", that is, they regard the equal sign as a symbol of a balanced relationship. On the contrary, students generally regard the equal sign as an operation symbol, because it is usually followed by the operation result. In other words, the left side of the equal sign is the operation process and the right side is the operation result. This requires us to strengthen the essence of "=" through one-to-one correspondence in the teaching process: the numbers (quantities) on both sides of the symbol are equal, which is extremely important for students to understand the meaning of the equation in the future.
(Excerpted from Mathematics Curriculum and Teaching in Primary Schools, edited by Kong Qiping, East China Normal University Press)