the.com/notation
a way of freezing thought into symbols so someone else's brain can steal it later.
means a system of written signs that stands in for ideas, sounds, or operations too complex to say every time.
from from latin notare, to mark or note down — scribes needed shorthand for recurring ideas, and every field since has invented its own alphabet of shortcuts.
algebra symbolequals sign invented 1557 to save writing 'is equal to'
music staffguido of arezzo's lines fixed pitch around 1025 ad
chess shorthandalgebraic notation replaced descriptive around the 1980s
calculus rivalryleibniz's dy/dx beat newton's dots because it scaled better
for instance
leibniz calculus notation — dy/dx still standard, chosen over newton's fluxions by 1800s consensus
laban dance notation — 1928 system scores choreography like sheet music
chemical formulas — berzelius fixed h2o-style shorthand in 1813
big o notation — landau symbol o() rates algorithm speed since 1894