Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (Y)

Last revision: June 01, 2003

Y-AXIS. Axis of y appears in "On the Attractions of Homogeneous Ellipsoids" by James Ivory, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 99. (1809), pp. 345-372. [JSTOR].

Y-axis is dated 1875 in MWCD10.

Y-axis is found in "Law of Facility of Errors in Two Dimensions [Continued]," E. L. de Forest, The Analyst, Vol. 8, No. 3. (May, 1881), pp. 73-82 [JSTOR].

Y-COORDINATE. See x-coordinate.

Y-INTERCEPT. Isaac Todhunter refers to "the intercept on the axis of y" in the 7th ed. of A Treatise on Plane Co-ordinate Geometry (1881).

y-intercept is found in 1924 in Analytic Geometry by Arthur M. Harding and George W. Mullins: "Find the equation of the line ... whose slope is 2/3 and whose y intercept is -3."

The term YOUDEN SQUARE was used by R. A. Fisher and F. Yates in the introduction to their Statistical Tables (1938). The term was coined by Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) and was named for William John Youden (1900-1971) (DSB, article: "Youden").

Geetha Home - A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z - Sources