Re:Curious and interesting numbers (Score 1)

I'm not sure about whether it's singular or plural in English, but there's an interesting (IMHO) story attached to the French word. When a group of French mathematicians under the group pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki started writing a series of books in which a very large part of mathematics was set up in a very general and formal style, they called it `Éléments de mathématique' (`Elements of mathematic'). Although the French word for mathematics is `mathématiques' (plural), they used the singular version because they thought mathematics should be viewed as a unified subject rather than as a loose collection of sub-subjects.