Yes, I finally found him. The one man who single-handedly ruined every kids future. The man who decided to add letters in math. Francis Viete, born in 1540 at Fontenay-le-Comte, France. His early life was quite unique, as he worked for Lady Soubise, the wife of a famed military general. He tutored her daughter, Catherine_de_Parthenay teaching her math, science, astrology, and trigonometry. He was exiled before, and he was also a doble agent for a short time. He died at the age of 63, however, no one knew the true cause of his death.
More than 500 years ago this man added letters to math, to act as parameters in equations, and to simplify equations. I mean I can see the understanding and the reasoning. Back then, they would describe formula's with words. For example, Pythagoras and his equation. Instead of saying "a^2 + b^2 = c^2", which is what we are used to now, he said "In any right-angled triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs." That was even hard for me to read it and understand.
It seems much easier to say the latter isn't it? But here is the thing. How do you know what a, or b, or c mean? You have to explain the process anyways. Adding the letters into the formula ended up just adding extra steps to the equation. He complicated the
In hindsight, Francis Viete definitely seems like a guy who had no friends. He was probably one of those kids that reminds the teacher to check the homework. But, he also seemed like a pretty bad-ass dude. Apparently, he found a key to the Spanish code of 500 letters, and was able to detect the secret messages being passed around between the Spaniards. He was also an extremely busy guy, being a lawyer and helping numerous mathematicians to solve some of the world's most difficult theories. Overall, this guy definitely is on every high-schoolers hit list, but he also seems like a pretty cool dude.
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