Thursday, February 09, 2006

Galois Humor

Forced to read an old Newsweek while having therapeutic electrical currents sent through my foot, I came across a review of The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved, a book about Abel and Galois.

The review explained that the equation which couldn't be solved was the quintic equation, which is "one step up from the dreaded quadratic equation," which students have to struggle to solve in school.

1 Comments:

At 1:04 PM, February 12, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess a square is a "quadrate" (has four sides) so squaring something makes it "quadratic."

 

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