Thanks to the book Group Theory in the Bedroom, by Brian Hayes, I finally found someone to blame for my geometry students' daily growing hatred of mathematical language.  His name is Robert Recorde.  For those of you who, like pre-this-week me, have never heard of Robert Recorde, don't worry: you've seen his handiwork.  Recorde was a 16th-century Welsh doctor, mathematician, and author of Whetstone of Witte (1557), the book in which the modern equals sign first appears.

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