= History of Vieta's formulas
<François Viète> studied the connection between positive <roots of a polynomial> and the <coefficients> of the powers of the unknown. His 1591 presentation of <algebraic notation> used letters for both known and unknown quantities, with consonants for known quantities and vowels for unknown quantities. That move makes it possible to express a relation for whole families of <polynomials>, rather than only a numerical instance. His historical setting concerned positive roots and expressions satisfying <dimensional homogeneity>; the modern <splitting field> formulation above is a broader statement.<François Viète by John Joseph O'Connor and Edmund Frederick Robertson>[MacTutor, François Viète: paragraphs on the 1591 algebraic notation, known and unknown quantities, and positive roots and coefficients]{ref}
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