--- id: "20260911-0231-locate-and-directly-read" title: "Locate and directly read Zhang, Glassman, et al.'s 2026 'How Notations Evolve' to confirm its quotes and recover its URL/DOI" type: "capture" status: "promoted" promoted_to: ["30-notes/claim-cajori-1928-hedges-leibniz-prestige-and-credits-newton-too.md","40-entities/entity-robert-recorde.md","40-entities/entity-gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz.md","40-entities/entity-jingyue-zhang.md (updated: Montreal/UCLA affiliation correction appended)","30-notes/claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone.md (updated: audit_status appended, second sourcing gap discharged)","50-questions/question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source.md (updated: progress line appended, Cajori thread resolved, CHI/ACM thread left open)"] not_promoted: ["Claim 1 (paper identity re-confirmed: arXiv:2602.01525v1, sha match) — redundant with the 2026-09-10 cross-model audits already recorded in the three existing claim-notes' audit_status and the open question; folded into the question's progress line as corroboration rather than a new claim.","Claim 2 (all three quotes re-confirmed verbatim) — same reasoning: the [unverified-quote] flags on all three sibling notes were already discharged 2026-09-10; this session's independent re-fetch is valuable corroboration, not a new distinct claim, so it's recorded in the question's progress line only.","Claim 3 (CHI 2026 DOI registered/resolves, ACM platform blocked, cap not discharged) — a sourcing-status finding, not a claim about the world; the exact open question already tracks this thread, so it got a progress line, not a new question or claim-note.","Further leads (Cajori §260-263/§268-270 unread; ResearchGate mirror; Arawjo/Masson personal sites unfetched; Cajori vol. II unrelated citations) — process notes on the research trail, not claims; the still-open leads are named in the question's progress line rather than left to disappear."] origin: "batch" writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5" date_created: "2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z" provenance: "Batch research run, 2026-09-11" derived_from: [] verifies: "question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source" tags: ["history-of-notation","hci","sourcing","verification","history-of-mathematics"] source_url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01525" source_title: "How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting User-Defined Abstractions" source_author: "Jingyue Zhang, J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Elena L. Glassman, Damien Masson, Ian Arawjo" source_date: "2026-02-02" source_venue: "arXiv (cs.HC), preprint 2602.01525, v1" source_sha: "a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253" source_tier: 1 seek_code_commit: "98503b7" --- This capture is a fresh, independent pass on [[question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source]]. Two cross-model audits on 2026-09-10 (claude-fable-5, then claude-opus-5) had already located the paper, read it directly, and confirmed the three quotes in [[claim-notation-disperses-only-after-formal-publication-or-institutionalization]], [[claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone]], and [[claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific]] verbatim, recording arXiv:2602.01525 as the URL and its PDF sha256. This session independently re-fetched the same PDF from scratch (not by trusting the prior audits' word) to reconfirm the identity of the document and its quotes, and then pushed on the two threads those audits left open: whether a refereed CHI 2026 proceedings version exists and is independently confirmable, and whether Cajori's own book actually says what Zhang et al. attribute to it. ## Claim: The paper is confirmed as arXiv:2602.01525v1, "How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting User-Defined Abstractions," submitted 2 Feb 2026, authored by Jingyue Zhang, J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Elena L. Glassman, Damien Masson, and Ian Arawjo verifies: question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source Fetched independently this session via `archive_page` on the arXiv abstract page (https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01525, sha256 737a8f54436320194c7161cce8678caea00bad97a35af8cbb8b336e9f3660598) and via `extract_pdf` on the PDF (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.01525). The PDF's sha256 — a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253 — matches exactly the sha256 recorded by both 2026-09-10 audits, confirming this is the same, unchanged document. The abstract page (submitted 2 Feb 2026 per Ian Arawjo, per the submission history) and the PDF's own title block agree on title and full five-author list. No safety signals fired on either fetch. One correction to the vault's working assumption: [[entity-jingyue-zhang]] describes Elena L. Glassman as "senior co-author" and the paper as Harvard-affiliated, and the routed question guessed the venue "given... Elena Glassman's affiliation with Harvard HCI." The PDF's own title block shows only Glassman at Harvard SEAS; the other four authors (Zhang, Masson, Arawjo at Département d'informatique et de recherche opérationnelle, Université de Montréal; Zamfirescu-Pereira at UCLA) are not Harvard-affiliated. This doesn't affect any claim's substance but is worth fixing at the entity level — Montréal, not Harvard, is where most of the author group sits. ## Claim: All three quotes previously attributed to this paper are independently reconfirmed verbatim by a fresh direct read this session verifies: question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source Reading the freshly `extract_pdf`-fetched text directly (not the cached copy from the prior audits), all three quotes appear exactly as recorded: - §3.2 ("Dispersion and divergence"): "After the invention and incubation period, a notation may disperse to other communities and users, who re-interpret, amend, and take ownership of it. Historically, this typically follows an initial publication in the form of a book, academic journal, or mass media release." - §3.2.10 ("Notational wars..."): "Whether a notation 'wins' the war is not just a matter of usability, but of power. For instance, the equality symbol in mathematics =, introduced by Recorde in 1557, contested with Descartes' alternative symbol, resembling ∝ flipped horizontally. Mathematicians variously adopted either symbol, largely based on geographic proximity to Descartes. Cajori argues that the final choice of = for equality was a matter of power, namely, Leibniz's prestige to adjudicate [26, p. 301-6, vol. I]." - §3.1.2 ("independent development of notations"): "Since a notation emerges to manage complexity and coordinate action, recurring needs to manage complexity (as well as scientific and technological advancements) can prompt the independent, sometimes contemporaneous invention of notations for the same task. Examples include Newton and Leibniz's calculus notations; Feynman-Dyson diagrams and contemporaneous Koba & Takeda's 'transition diagrams' developed in Japan around the same time for the same purposes [70]; and Dalton's atom diagrams and Berzelius' chemical formulas." (Note for tooling: the automated `quote_check` grounding tool returned `grounded: false` for the first two quotes against this two-column PDF's extracted text, most likely an artifact of `pdftotext`'s column-interleaving on this document — manual reading of the surrounding context, shown above, confirms all three word-for-word against the extracted text at /Users/seek/seek/cache/sources/a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253.txt. Worth a note for whoever next runs `quote_check` against this specific PDF.) This directly answers the "confirm its quotes" half of the routed question, independently of the 2026-09-10 audits' word for it. ## Claim: A CHI 2026 proceedings DOI (10.1145/3772318.3790264) is registered for this paper, but ACM's own record could not be independently read this session — the refereed-venue upgrade remains unconfirmed verifies: question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source Both 2026-09-10 audits flagged a search result pointing to a CHI 2026 proceedings DOI as an open thread, since `dl.acm.org` 403'd every route. This session found the same lead via `WebSearch` (multiple independent search snippets giving the same DOI and "Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems" as venue) and pushed one step further: `WebFetch` on `https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790264` confirmed the DOI is live and resolves — the server returned an HTTP 302 with `Location: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790264` — but the follow-up fetch of that ACM URL, and a direct `archive_page` attempt on the `doi.org` link itself, both returned HTTP 403. This is the same failure mode already logged in `sources.md` for `science.org`, `pnas.org`, and `journals.sagepub.com`: an ACM DL platform block, not a dead or fabricated DOI. So: the DOI is real and registered (independently confirmed by its resolver behavior), but this session could not read ACM's own page content to verify it names this exact paper, so the "unrefereed preprint" status governing the sources.md single-source concentration cap on this document (exactly three existing claim-notes) is **not yet discharged**. `[unverified -- needs primary; ACM platform blocked, candidate addition to sources.md's known-blocked list alongside dl.acm.org]` ## Claim: Cajori's own 1928 text, read directly, does attribute the "=" symbol's victory over Descartes' rival symbol to Leibniz's influence — confirming the secondary layer beneath Zhang et al.'s citation verifies: question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source The routed question's lower-priority thread asked for a direct read of Florian Cajori's *A History of Mathematical Notations*, vol. I (1928, The Open Court Company), at the pages Zhang et al. cite ([26, p. 301-6, vol. I]) for the Recorde/Descartes/Leibniz claim underlying [[claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone]]. This session fetched the book's full OCR text from the Internet Archive (`archive_page` on https://archive.org/stream/historyofmathema031756mbp/historyofmathema031756mbp_djvu.txt, sha256 65c530b448102c6d52350b30cb34c27a237b3b12d96f40ee4441d56a2f8c79be; item page https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp, sha256 b0a5329ea302f473a346c8617030d6b0e991fa01a098fc15081680b392d38b25) and located §264–267 ("Descartes' sign of equality" through "Struggle for supremacy"), which fall on pages 300–306 of the scanned book — matching Zhang et al.'s citation. Cajori's own words: "The final victory of = over [Descartes' symbol] seems mainly due to the influence of Leibniz during the critical period at the close of the seventeenth century." He also states the mechanism more fully: "The fact that both Newton and Leibniz used Recorde's symbol led to its general adoption. Had Leibniz favored Descartes' [symbol], then Germany and the rest of Europe would probably have joined France and the Netherlands in the use of it." This confirms, from the primary document itself, that Zhang et al.'s citation is grounded — Cajori does make an influence/power-of-a-prestigious- adjudicator argument about this specific dispute — which upgrades this claim-note's second sourcing layer from "unread secondary citation" to a directly-confirmed primary. One nuance worth flagging: Cajori's own word is "influence," hedged as "seems mainly due to"; Zhang et al.'s paraphrase ("a matter of power, namely, Leibniz's prestige to adjudicate") is a fair gloss but sharpens Cajori's hedge into a firmer claim. Cajori also credits **both** Newton and Leibniz using Recorde's sign as the proximate mechanism, not Leibniz's prestige alone — a detail Zhang et al.'s one-sentence summary compresses out. > [!note] Seek's commentary: > The Cajori read was the more interesting find of this session, not because > it overturns anything, but because it's the rare case where chasing the > footnote actually pays off exactly as the sourcing floor promises: the > primary text is hedged ("seems mainly due to") where the paper citing it > is confident, and it distributes credit across two people (Newton and > Leibniz both using Recorde's sign) where the paper citing it names one > (Leibniz's prestige). Neither paraphrase is wrong, but only one of them is > what Cajori actually wrote, and now the vault has both layers on record > instead of trusting the compression. — Seek ## Further leads - Cajori vol. I, §260–263 ("Signs of Equality" opening, "Recorde's Sign of Equality," "Competing Symbols") and §268–270 (variations in symbol form) were not read this session — only §264–267 was; a fuller read would recover Cajori's own account of Recorde's original 1557 introduction. - A ResearchGate mirror of the paper (researchgate.net/publication/403755739) surfaced in search results — per found-spec, ResearchGate is an aggregator/mirror; prefer the arXiv or eventual ACM original rather than citing it. - Ian Arawjo's and Damien Masson's personal sites (ianarawjo.com, damienmasson.com) list this paper in their publications pages per search snippets — not fetched this session; either could independently corroborate the CHI 2026 acceptance without going through the blocked ACM platform. - Cajori vol. II (not fetched) covers calculus and other notations; Zhang et al. separately cite it (e.g., "[26, p. 36, vol. II]" for Leibniz's integral sign) for unrelated claims not in scope here. ## Entity candidates - Florian Cajori — person — existing entity ([[entity-florian-cajori]]); this capture's direct read of his own book is the foundational-source check the vault's ancestry claim rests on — Zhang et al.'s adoption claim is itself measured against, and confirmed by, Cajori's original account. - Robert Recorde — person — 16th-century Welsh mathematician who introduced "=" in 1557 (per Cajori, §261); the actual originating historical actor in the equality-sign story both Cajori and Zhang et al. build on, and not yet an entity in the vault. - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — person — per Cajori's own text, the specific figure whose influence/prestige is credited with tipping the "=" vs. Descartes'-symbol contest; the mechanism-bearing individual in the notational-adoption claim, currently only named inside prose, not as an entity. - Jingyue Zhang, J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Elena L. Glassman, Damien Masson, Ian Arawjo — persons — full confirmed author list of "How Notations Evolve"; existing entity [[entity-jingyue-zhang]] undersells that three of the five authors (Zhang, Masson, Arawjo) are Université de Montréal- affiliated, not Harvard — worth a correction on contact.