Talk:n

I'm not sure etymology is the correct word when talking about a letter. --Vladisdead 06:55, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How about "Ideogrammatic roots?" And should "any unknown value or thing" be a definition, or is that more or less just X. — Blade Hirato 07:26, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think that something along the lines of "any quantity or value; especially a natural number" is a good definition; this use is common colloquially among my peers. 174.0.89.56 23:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

See below for discussion of algebraic use; definition as of 'any unknown value or quantity; especially a naturla number. It seems as if all the contributions on this page might be talking about the same thing, one or another of us needs to be bold. I guess we don't feel very confident about how this specific page should work? Kathybramley (talk) 11:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

But - hmm. It seems n is sample size, and yet there is the colloquial expression 'to the nth degree' which would suggest it stood for the variable. Is this in the scope of this page? This particular article/page, is it limited to the alphabetic letter, not to other uses. There's different kinds of maths usage; it's a rare roman numeral for zero, even, apparently! Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_%28disambiguation%29. And http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/n Kathybramley (talk) 11:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Do we need an entry for n̩? 71.66.97.228 04:11, 12 June 2010 (UTC)Reply

It has it's own page! See here for ņ (with cedilla): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%86 - a page for this Latvian letter form; the whole Latvian set created by commission in 1908. "Prior to that, Latvian had been written in German Fraktur, and sporadically in Cyrillic." I found the via the Appendix on variations of n, link appears at the top of this article for n.https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Variations_of_%22n%22 Kathybramley (talk) 17:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

As a term, n is also a notation in Algebra. I don't understand it very well, or at least I wanted to confirm my understanding from having studied statistics a long while ago and being generally interested in maths and language; came here for reference! And was disappointed. It denotes the variable, doesn't it, in Maths and and statistical sciences. And the English expression 'to the Nth (degree, option, time of occurence etc)' also written 'to the nth', cf 'ad infinitum', 'to the extreme' or 'to the hilt'; this in etymology is derived from n (algebra and statistics) + the numerical place suffix th? Kathybramley (talk) 11:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC) The general as-if-statistical use I mentioned is recorded in the Oxford dictionary on-line: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/n but statistical use etc is about sample size. See WP disambig page linked above. I am not clear why there is the divergence; it's pretty confusing! Kathybramley (talk) 11:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)Reply