A Look At One Of Math's Famous Letters: x
Hi everyone. In this post, I provide a brief overview of one of math's famous letters. That is the letter x. This letter is commonly seen when math students are first introduced to algebra and is often used in math functions and other math courses.
At first, I wanted to title this as Math's Famous Letter: x but there are some other famous letters too. Other notable famous letters in math include y and z. Greek letters such as alpha (α), beta (β), and sigma (σ) are used often too.
The Letter x For Multiplication
A lot of people can relate to multiplication and learning it when they were young. In multiplication, this × symbol is used. If we have 2 × 4, it means that there are 2 groups of 4 which is 4 + 4 = 8.
Learning multiplication takes a lot of time and practice. The use of flash cards can come in handy.
The Letter x In Early Algebra
Early examples of solving for unknowns include:
Solve For x
One example is solving quadratic equations as shown in the image below.
Functions Which Use x As Inputs
As one transitions from y to the f(x) function notation, you can see that the letter x takes on the role as an input to get an output y or f(x). This idea of inputs and outputs is also helpful in computer science/programming.
Too Many x's!
x has different meanings and operations depending on the math context.