How Ordinary Elimination Became Gaussian Elimination

Newton, in notes that he would rather not have seen published, described a process for solving simultaneous equations that later authors applied specifically to linear equations. This method that Euler did not recommend, that Legendre called "ordinary," and that Gauss called "common" - is now named after Gauss: "Gaussian" elimination. Gauss's name became associated with elimination through the adoption, by professional computers, of a specialized notation that Gauss devised for his own least squares calculations. The notation allowed elimination to be viewed as a sequence of arithmetic operations that were repeatedly optimized for hand computing and eventually were described by matrices.Comment: 56 pages, 21 figures, 1 tabl

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Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory

The modern definition of unemployment emerged in the late 1930s from research conducted at the Works Progress Administration and the Census Bureau. According to this definition, people who are not working but actively searching for work are counted as unemployed. This concept was first used in the Enumerative Check Census, a follow-up sample for the 1937 Census of Unemployment, and continued with the Monthly Report on the Labor Force survey, begun in December 1939 by the Works Progress Administration. A similar definition is now used to measure unemployment around the world.