A figure allows you to express a quantity.
Figure is that belonging to or relating to numbers . This term (number) is linked to the expression of a quantity in relation to its unit .
For example: “The first figures indicate a victory for the official candidate” , “I have read your report and I don't like the sales figure at all” , “For the project to be profitable, we will have to pay more attention to the income figure” .
The figure, an expression of quantity
The expression of a quantity composed of two or more figures is known as a figure. The use of the concept is common in election processes , in reference to the percentages of votes received by the candidates. These percentages are key to knowing who won (that is, who was elected): “The mayor stated that he distrusts the figures published by the media and stated that he will wait for the official results,” “The president was dissatisfied with the figures.” achieved by its candidate.”
Figures can also refer to all types of statistics, such as population or demographic data, economic figures, etc.: “The Government will analyze the figures collected by the census to decide how to distribute resources,” “The birth rate figures have surprised to the specialists.”
Figures are numbers.
a symbol
A figure, on the other hand, is an Arabic sign , letter or number that expresses a quantity. These symbols are called Arabic because they were introduced by the Arabs in Europe , although it is believed that they were invented in India . There is a wide variety of glyphs to represent figures, divided into families such as Eastern Arabic numerals and Western Arabic numerals.
In this case, a figure is understood as each sign that is part of a number in a system , and that can join others to express a quantity; For example, the number 26 is made up of the figures 2 and 6 . It is worth mentioning that the term comes from the Arabic Al-juarezmi , nickname of Mohamed-ben-Muza , an important Persian mathematician who lived in the 9th century and spread the Arabic numeral system and the principles of Indian mathematics. It is worth mentioning that the numerical system that we use in the West comes from the legacy that these people left us.
Origin of figures
Regarding the origin of the figures that we use today, there are various theories, some of which seem to stretch reality a bit, such as the one that suggests that each one was chosen for having the number of angles it represents; For example, zero has no angles, since it is an oval, while one, if drawn as two connected lines, forms an angle, and so on. It is believed that this is nothing more than a myth coming from certain restless minds but little educated regarding the true origin of figures.
If we take four and seven, the theory does not seem to hold very firmly, since they have too many strokes that would in no way be as easy to remember or reproduce as those of three, six or eight, for example. In any case, numbers occupy a very important place in our society, since they are among the first concepts that we learn in childhood and they accompany us throughout our lives to measure our age, the duration of our relationships, our economic income and our performance as students, among many other things (which can also be counted with numbers).
As a curiosity, the word guarismo has the same Latin root of algorithm , although its meanings are considerably different; An algorithm is a defined series of instructions or rules that allow a specific goal to be achieved when reproduced in order , always starting from the same initial state. These are two concepts that intersect in more than one context, given that algorithms usually rely on numbers in one way or another.