Sigma History

[Ken Walker]

I hope this is the appropriate place for this post, but I was just curious as to anyone having information about why the Greek Sigma symbol was used for the AutoSum function. I've looked up the definition and it didn't seem related to totals or anything pertinent that I saw. Just a matter of curiosity, if anyone in the world knows, I figured it would be somebody here. :wink:

 

[NateO]

Hi Ken,

This is a good forum for such a question.

The use of Greek Letters in Scientific and Math notation is quite common; Excel is using an old and widely practiced convention.

Regarding Summation and Sigma, see the following:

http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/Summing.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma

Another example is that Delta typically stands for Change in Scientific and Mathematical notation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta

 

[Ken Walker]

Thanks Nate, that was exactly what I was looking for!