# Mathematician:Walter Percy Workman

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## Mathematician

English mathematician and schoolmaster best known for the school textbooks he wrote.

A proponent of the metric system.

English

## History

• Born: 2 November 1863, London
• Died: 18 September 1918, London

## Notable Quotes

Formal completeness is perhaps beyond the reach of an English author whose soul is vexed perforce with Weights and Measures and the barbarous mechanism by which they are manipulated, who is condemned also by the tyranny of an examination system to waste the space at his disposal in elaboration of the details of Complex Fractions, Abstract and Concrete, and other subjects of similar inelegance and uselessness. Moreover, further to militate against completeness, there exists an extraordinary prejudice against the use of literal symbols which are supposed to be the inalienable property of Algebra. The consequence is that while nobody doubts that the work in Ex. $2$, p.$89$, for instance, is Arithmetic, yet it becomes Algebra in the eyes of many if we replace "cost of clock" by $c$, i.e. use one letter instead of eleven to denote the quantity in question. A really scientific treatise on Arithmetic is impossible so long as this divorce between Arithmetic and Algebra continues.

...half a year of school life is entirely wasted for every English boy in learning the arithmetical devices necessary for managing the "weights and measures" previously explained.