Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> (This is why mathematicians use a 
>> bazillion weird symbols for communication.)
> 
>   Which works only when the symbols are well-established and known, not
> unlike the keywords of a programming language.

I especially love the way mathematicians have developed seperate 
unrelated symbolisms for the same concepts. Or how occasionally the same 
symbols can mean radically different things depending on context.

(This isn't limited to symbols of course. How many meanings for the word 
"normal" can you find? There's the normal distribution, normal vectors, 
normed spaces...)

>   Try understanding mathematical formulas without knowing what the symbols
> mean of where they might be defined...

Been there, done that. It's not like there's a book somewhere which 
tells you what all this stuff means, after all. (And I was never taught 
mathematics.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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