Contributions To Mathematics
Wallis made significant contributions to trigonometry, calculus, geometry, and the analysis of infinite series. In his Opera Mathematica I (1695) Wallis introduced the term "continued fraction".
Wallis rejected as absurd the now usual idea of a negative number as being less than nothing, but accepted the view that it is something greater than infinity. (The argument that negative numbers are greater than infinity involves the quotient and considering what happens as x approaches and then crosses the point x = 0 from the positive side.) Despite this he is generally credited as the originator of the idea of the number line where numbers are represented geometrically in a line with the positive numbers increasing to the right and negative numbers to the left.
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