Why m represents slope

However, there is no evidence to make any such connection. Descartes, who was French, did not use m. They end with this witticism by Howard W. Eves who taught at my alma mater of U. Maine, although before my time : When lecturing before an analytic geometry class during the early part of the course Compare to k for "koefficient" in Swedish textbooks, per Wolfram.

Posted by Delta at AM. December 14, at PM. Delta December 21, at AM. Newer Post Older Post Home. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. View my complete profile. Powered by Blogger. The letter m stands for slope because it comes from the French word monter, to climb. Brainyblonde Answer has 11 votes. Brainyblonde 21 year member replies Answer has 11 votes.

Currently voted the best answer. Why call slope m has been a question that has been researched by math historians but has not been answered definitively yet. Erica Voolich Many people have been taught that it comes from the French, "monter", to climb. I think this is an "urban legend".

John Conway Former Mathematics book writer, M. Risi answered "In our system, the first letters of the alphabet, a, b , c So it was a parameter and that is why we used m. Risi plainly wasn't the first person to use "m" in this connection. The latter form still seems to me to be more natural, since this "c" is like the arbitrary constants in indefinite integrals, and so it will probably be very hard to date. But the "b" usage probably originated with the author of a particular influential North American textbook.

Professor Rickey says there is absolutely no proof for the French connection. Since then I have pushed the first use of the word that I know of back to The intercept sits out there by itself because it is an absolute location on the line. If x changes by a lot, the y-intercept is still just the y-intercept. It doesn't care how x is changing.

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See mathforum. Those letters and their order makes sense. The letters that we use are completely irrelevant to the math.