When was the cartesian coordinate plane discovered

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies. We do not use cookies of this type. Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites.

The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers. Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.

Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in. Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies. Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient.

The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site.

For all other types of cookies we need your permission. However it is an entertaining story, and there could well be some truth to it.

This is a definite part of math history, as his study of curves is still being published in this book, which you can still find on Amazon. See here for one place to get it. In any case, I do think that algebra teachers might like to use this story about Descartes, as it shows how just being observant can lead to new perspectives that can have profound impacts. Whether or not this specific story is fully true, the general idea that being observant is a good thing is no doubt as true as ever.

Invisible Misunderstandings: Square roots of 2 and 3. Me parece una lectura muy interesante la cual nos explica sobre quien invento el plano de coordenadas como podemos ayar y como lo descubrieron. Like Like. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.

Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Search: Go! Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address:. Sign me up! Website Powered by WordPress. Then he tried describing the positions of points, the same way he described the position of the fly. Descartes had invented the coordinate plane! In fact, the coordinate plane is sometimes called the Cartesian plane, in his honor.

I've found the same claim on several other sites, including this one and this one which says "legend has it. The closest thing I've found to a reputable source is this page from Southern Arkansas University. The book Descartes: A Very Short Introduction which at pages vastly exceed most on-line biographies of him only has this to say on the matter.

Readers who are familiar with representing solutions to equations by using X and Y axes to plot coordinates are acquainted with techniques that, if not invented by Descartes, were developed and applied by him in novel ways in his Geometry.

The SEP page on Descartes is even a bit more adamant:. The page Cambridge Companion to Descartes covers in some detail the Geometry. Basically, Descartes used two non-orthogonal coordinates to solve Papus' four-line locus problem. Actually, more or less the same info can be found freely on-line e.

But nowhere in the Companion is it claimed that Descartes invented the Cartesian coordinates, nor is there a fly story mentioned. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 3 years, 11 months ago. Active 3 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 12k times. Is there an academic source confirming or disconfirming this claim?