Mathematics is a broad-ranging field of study in which the properties and interactions of idealized objects are examined. Whereas mathematics began merely as a calculational tool for computation and tabulation of quantities, it has blossomed into an extremely rich and diverse set of tools, terminologies, and approaches which range from the purely abstract to the utilitarian.
Bertrand Russell once whimsically defined mathematics as "The subject in which we never know what we are talking about nor whether what we are saying is true" (Bergamini 1969). In 1900, David Hilbert stated, "mathematics is the foundation of all exact knowledge of natural phenomena" and Alfred Whitehead remarked in 1911 that "all science as it grows toward perfection becomes mathematical in its ideas" (Wolfram 2002, p. 859).
The term "mathematics" is often shortened to "math" in informal American speech and "maths" in British English. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "math" has been in usage in London and the United States since 1890. The first usage of "maths" first occurred as a colloquialism 21 years later. The term "math" also means a Hindu convent, so since the introduction of the variant "maths" corresponds to the period where Queen Victoria was empress of India, perhaps the trailing "s" was added to avoid confusion in India.
