Final Cover - For Printing

Module 63

ALGEBRAIC CONCEPTS

Algebra
The word ‘Algebra’ is derived from the Arabic word al-jabr. In Arabic, ‘al’ means ‘the’ and
‘jabr’ means ‘reunion of broken parts’. Diophantus, a Greek mathematician is considered
to be the father of Algebra. Algebra is a branch of mathematics in which constants and
variables are used along with basic arithmetic operations. In other words, algebra may be
considered as the generalized arithmetic.

1. Mathematical statement
   A statement is a meaningful combination of words. In addition to the words of the
   statement, if numbers are also used to make the statement then it becomes a
   mathematical statement.

Eg. : John is 10 years old now. What will be the age of him after 5 years?

Note that the above statement involves three numbers, of which 2 are known and the

remaining one is unknown. Hence the statement is a combination of both words and

numbers and hence it forms a mathematical statement.

The idea of a mathematical statement may be explained to the child orally with as

many examples as possible. After the provision of adequate examples the child may

also be asked to give a few mathematical statements of his/her own.

2. Place holder
   Mathematical statements involve unknown numbers and different symbols are being
   used to denote these unknown numbers. Such symbols are known as place holders,