Mathematical Language and Symbols
Language
- It is the system of words, signs and symbols which people use to express ideas, thoughts and feelings
- It consists of the words, their pronunciation and the methods of combining them to be understood by a
community.
- It is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds,
gestures or marks having understood meanings.
Mathematical Language
- It is the system used to communicate mathematical ideas.
Characteristics of Mathematical Language
- It is non-temporal
- It is devoid of emotional content
- It is precise
Variables – any quantity which may take on different values
Constant – any quantity that is fixed
Mathematical Expressions
- It consists of term/s
- The term is separated from other terms with either plus or minus signs
Multivariate Mathematical Expressions – have more than one variable
Literal Coefficients – represents the unknown and makes use of letters
Numerical Coefficient – the number with a variable
Mathematical Sentence – It combines two mathematical expressions using comparison operator. These expressions
either use numbers, variables or both.
Comparison Operator – it includes equal, not equal, greater than, greater than or equal to, less than, and less than or
equal to
Open Sentence - In math, it means that it uses variables, meaning that it is not known whether or not the mathematical
sentence is true or false.
Closed Sentence – It is a mathematical sentence that is known to be either true or false.
Set – It is a well-defined collection of distinct objects. It is conventionally named with capital letters.
Subset – It is a set every element of which can be found on a bigger set.
Improper Subset – includes the set itself and the null set
Ways to Describe a Set
1. Roster/Tabular Method – the elements in the given set are listed or enumerated, separated by comma,
inside a pair of braces
2. Rule/Descriptive Method – the common characteristic of the elements are defined. It uses the set builder
notation where x is used to represent any element of the given set.
Kinds of Sets
1. Empty Set – it has no element
2. Finite Set – has countable number of elements
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3. Infinite Set – has uncountable number of elements
4. Universal Set – It is the totality of all the elements of the sets under consideration, and is denoted by U.
Relationship between Sets
1. Equal Sets have the same elements.
2. Equivalent Sets have the same number of elements.
3. Joint Sets have at least one common element.
4. Disjoint Sets have no common element.
Set Operations
1. Union of Sets A and B is a set whose elements are found in A or B or in Both
2. Intersection of Sets A and B is a set whose elements are common to both sets
3. Difference of Sets A and B is a set whose elements are found in Set A but not in Set B.
4. Complement of Set A is a set whose elements are found in the Universal Set but not in Set A.
Venn-Euler Diagrams (or simply Venn Diagrams) is the pictorial representation of relationship and operations of sets.
Example: Out of forty students, 14 are taking English Composition and 29 are taking Chemistry.
a. If five students are in both classes, how many students are in neither class?
b. How many are in either class?
SOLUTION:
1. Draw 2 overlapping circles since there are 5 students attending both classes.
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2. The first circle will be for English with 14 students and the other one for Chemisty with 29 students.
English (14) Chemistry (29)
3. Put 5 on the intersection of the circles.
English (14) Chemistry (29)
4. Subract the number in the intersection from the numbers from English and Chemistry and write it on the other
part of the designated circle.
English (14) Chemistry (29)
9 5 24 2
5. The total number of students is forty… Therefore,the number of students not attending english and chemistry
will be 40 – 9 – 5 – 24 = 2. You will put that anywhere outside the circle.
Conclusion: 9 are taking English Only
24 are taking Chemistry Only
5 are taking English and Chemistry
38 are taking English or Chemistry (9+5+24)
2 are in neither class
26 are not taking English (24 + 2)
11 are not taking Chemistry
