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Rene Descartes came up with the standard 'x' and 'y' axis graph as we know it today. The story goes that one day as he was lying in bed, he noticed a fly on his ceiling. He thought to himself that he could give the exact location of that fly on the ceiling with only two numbers: the distance from the base of one wall and the distance from the base of the perpendicular wall. Thus we have the x-axis and y-axis and indeed, given a point of reference (or origin), one can give the exact location of a point on a 2-dimensional surface using only two coordinates.

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16y ago

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