Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?

http://www.ted.com Why is 'x' the symbol for an unknown? In this short and funny talk, Terry Moore gives the surprising answer.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate

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[TesticleFury]

Fucking retard, it is arabs who first thought of and studied evolution. As a matter of fact, even with something as imagniary as religion, arabs had more sense than western athiests.

[TheFriendlyArabGuy]

Wow, you realize Arab is a race, not a religion? There are Arab Christians, Arab Jews and Arab Muslims. If you really want to make everything a competition none of the west's scientific achievements would be possible without the Arabs/Persians/Turks who formed the base of practically everything we know today. You need to wake up and stop generalizing and being ignorant. You say you don't have American TV, where is your stupidity coming from then?

[DonCorleoneQ8]

Take this too, derivations ( the main part of calculus ) was invented in Iraq hundred of years before newton.

[TacoJim05]

Algebra's first modern ideas showed up in Baghdad in 820 AD, Descartes is from around the 1500's. Terry Moore explains how the translation happened.

[Mohammed Alwassm]

Mmmm i got it

[Bao trinh minh]

Because you can't say S_H in spanis - That it's, LOL

[alrazy12]

and you mother fuckers saying arabs are terrorists well you are xxx fucking idiots shy2on

[VICTHEREALEST]

i thought it was Descartes who introduced the use of x as an unknown???...

[Jeff Wilson]

You are a retard to expect a former colonized, war ridden area to produce nobel prize winning talent. Also the user "TesticlFury" said people like Ibn Khaldun who in his book wrote about "man coming from the world of apes" or Al Jahiz in his book "kitab al haywan" talked about "environment causing evolution in specie". You are just another white hick with too much hatred.

[jalalgjl]

Loog ago question just aswered tanks

[Shaun W]

I think you might have testicle fury.

[Triggerboy78]

"About 6 years ago, I decided that I would learn aerobic..." i thought: WHAT??? ( 0:37 )