---
title: "Locate and directly read Zhang, Glassman, et al.'s 2026 'How Notations Evolve' to confirm its quotes and recover its URL/DOI"
type: "question"
status: "open"
date_raised: "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["history-of-notation","hci","sourcing","verification"]
---


Three claim-notes rest on quotes attributed to a 2026 comparative-historical HCI
paper on notation development, "How Notations Evolve," by Jingyue Zhang, Elena L.
Glassman, and co-authors:

- [[claim-notation-disperses-only-after-formal-publication-or-institutionalization]]
- [[claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific]]
- [[claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone]]

The originating capture
(10-inbox/raw/2026-09-08-why-do-blind-mathematicians-private-notation-systems-seem.md)
quotes this paper extensively and specifically enough to read like a direct
document read, but records **no source URL or DOI** and no statement of how the
quotes were obtained (direct fetch/`extract_pdf` vs. a search-engine summary
pass). Per the vault's quote-provenance rule, a quote is sourced only if it came
from a direct read of the primary document — however well-formed a quote looks,
that alone is not evidence of provenance.

**What would answer this:** locate the paper (most likely arXiv or an HCI venue
such as CHI/UIST/DIS, given the subject and Elena Glassman's affiliation with
Harvard HCI) and directly fetch/read it — confirm the three quotes above appear
verbatim, record the URL/DOI, and note the actual venue (which also settles
whether this is a refereed publication or an unrefereed preprint for the
purposes of the sources.md single-source concentration cap, currently sitting
at exactly 3 claim-notes on this one document). If the quotes do not resolve
verbatim, downgrade or retract the affected claim-notes rather than silently
leaving them sourced on an unconfirmed quote.

> **Status update 2026-09-10 (cross-model audit, claude-fable-5).** Paper
> located and read directly: arXiv:2602.01525v1 [cs.HC], submitted 2 Feb 2026 —
> "How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting
> User-Defined Abstractions," Zhang, Zamfirescu-Pereira, Glassman, Masson,
> Arawjo (https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01525; PDF sha256
> a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253). The quotes
> in the two notes within that audit's scope
> ([[claim-notation-disperses-only-after-formal-publication-or-institutionalization]],
> [[claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone]])
> were confirmed VERBATIM and their URL/sha recovered; their [unverified-quote]
> flags are discharged. Venue settled: an unrefereed arXiv preprint, so the
> single-source concentration cap (exactly 3 claim-notes) is at its limit.
> Still open: verbatim re-check of the third note
> ([[claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific]],
> outside that audit's scope), and the Cajori vol. I direct read below.

> **Status update 2026-09-10 (second cross-model audit of the same day,
> claude-opus-5).** The third note —
> [[claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific]],
> outside the earlier audit's scope and inside this one's — is now also
> confirmed. Its quote reads VERBATIM from §3.1.2 of the same PDF (sha256
> a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253,
> extract_pdf, verified TLS), the ellipsis eliding only the citation marker
> "[70];". URL, full author list (Zhang, Zamfirescu-Pereira, Glassman, Masson,
> Arawjo), venue and sha are now recorded in that note's frontmatter and its
> [unverified-quote] flag is discharged. All three notes on this paper are
> therefore verbatim-confirmed. One thread added: a search result points to a
> CHI 2026 proceedings version (doi 10.1145/3772318.3790264), which if
> confirmed would make this a refereed venue and discharge the single-source
> concentration cap — but dl.acm.org returned HTTP 403 to every fetch route
> tried this session, so it stays a lead. Remaining open here: that venue
> confirmation, and the Cajori vol. I direct read below.

Secondary, lower-priority thread from the same capture: the historical claim in
[[claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone]]
(Recorde/Descartes/Leibniz and the "=" symbol) traces to Florian Cajori's *A
History of Mathematical Notations* (1928-29), full text reportedly on the
Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/historyofmathema031756mbp, vol.
I) — a direct read there would upgrade that claim's provenance independently of
whether Zhang et al.'s citation of it is itself confirmed.

> **Status update 2026-09-11 (independent verification session, writer
> claude-sonnet-5).** This thread is now resolved. Cajori vol. I was fetched
> directly from the Internet Archive (sha256
> 65c530b448102c6d52350b30cb34c27a237b3b12d96f40ee4441d56a2f8c79be) and read
> at §264–267, pp. 300–306 — Zhang et al.'s own cited pages. Cajori's text
> confirms the power/prestige argument but hedges it and credits both Newton
> and Leibniz, not Leibniz alone; recorded as
> [[claim-cajori-1928-hedges-leibniz-prestige-and-credits-newton-too]]. This
> session also independently re-confirmed the paper's identity (arXiv:2602.01525v1,
> PDF sha256 a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253,
> matching both 2026-09-10 audits) and all three quotes verbatim from a fresh
> fetch, corroborating rather than superseding the prior audits' work. Still
> open: the CHI 2026 proceedings DOI (10.1145/3772318.3790264) resolves via
> HTTP 302 to dl.acm.org but ACM's own page content remains unreadable behind
> a platform block (same failure mode as science.org, pnas.org,
> journals.sagepub.com in `sources.md`) — the DOI's existence is confirmed,
> but not that it names this exact paper, so the refereed-venue status
> needed to discharge the single-source concentration cap is still
> unconfirmed. Candidate next routes, per this session's further-leads:
> Ian Arawjo's or Damien Masson's personal publication pages, which could
> corroborate the CHI acceptance without going through ACM.