Scott Dautel

Here's a trivia question a local math teacher has been using to torture the high school junior class. Winner gets 20 extra credit points for the semester.

The standard linear equation "y=Mx+B" was developed by Descartes, a French mathematician. The question is .... Why was the letter "M" chosen to represent slope & why was "B" chosen to represent the y-intercept?

I believe the answer to the first part is "monter" or "to climb" ... a derivative of the french word for rise (slope). I can't guess the history of the "B".

Ricardo C

Man, an hour wasted on this sig! Thanks, Toshiba! :p

Keith Mickunas

Well I found this with a google search which leads here and states no one knows why m is used. This same article provides the following explanation for b:

Keith Mickunas

Here's another:
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.terms.html
Just do a google search for y=mx+b and you'll find some useful stuff. Most everything seems to imply it's arbitrary.