Q 01/05

The word algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr, a term for restoring that was also used for which medical treatment?

A) Bloodletting

B) Bonesetting

C) Tooth pulling

D) Cataract surgery

Answer · why

B) Bonesetting

Bonesetting was called algebra in English in the 15th and 16th centuries, a medical usage that probably came from Arab doctors in Spain.

Q 02/05

Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde invented which symbol in 1557 because he was tired of writing the same words?

A) Division sign

B) Infinity symbol

C) Equals sign

D) Multiplication sign

Answer · why

C) Equals sign

The equals sign made its debut in The Whetstone of Witte, where Recorde chose two parallel lines of one length because no two things can be more equal...

Q 03/05

Which 9th-century Persian scholar wrote the book that named algebra and later gave his own name to the word algorithm?

A) Avicenna

B) Al-Biruni

C) Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

D) Al-Khwarizmi

Answer · why

D) Al-Khwarizmi

Al-Khwarizmi worked at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad around 820, and Latin translators later rendered his name as Algoritmi.

Q 04/05

Which English shoemaker's son gives his name to the algebra of true and false values behind computer logic?

A) Charles Babbage

B) George Boole

C) Alan Turing

D) Augustus De Morgan

Answer · why

B) George Boole

George Boole set out the system in The Laws of Thought in 1854, and Claude Shannon later applied it to relay circuits, the forerunners of digital comp...

Q 05/05

The graph of a quadratic function such as y = x² is which U-shaped curve, also traced by a thrown ball?

A) Parabola

B) Hyperbola

C) Ellipse

D) Catenary

Answer · why

A) Parabola

A parabola also gives satellite dishes and car headlight reflectors their shape, because the curve gathers parallel rays at a single focal point.