Mathematical Notation Is Awful

Post by iopq » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:12 PM UTC

papaf wrote: post #59

iopq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have taken ten years of math in school and then calculus, discrete math, linear algebra. That's all useless if I want to follow math in a simple research paper because they're using notation common in THAT field and it has nothing to do with the notation in another math field. And it's all V hat superscript pi subscript h. It's not like code, where I get descriptive variable names. And you thought pi meant pi? No,…

Reading a "simple" research paper requires a different approach compared to reading a newspaper or a blog. I hope the following explanation helps. The notation actually helps to keep things simple. I think of it as a kind of metalinguistic programming [1] where a notation is introduced which then makes the important parts easier to understand. I am not mathematically inclined but I have to read papers containing math…

Post by papaf » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:19 PM UTC

iopq wrote: post #61

papaf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading a "simple" research paper requires a different approach compared to reading a newspaper or a blog. I hope the following explanation helps. The notation actually helps to keep things simple. I think of it as a kind of metalinguistic programming [1] where a notation is introduced which then makes the important parts easier to understand. I am not mathematically inclined but I have to read papers containing math…

> The second time I have a pen and a highlighter where I actually label the mathematical symbols with arrows and words (using the textual descriptions). Gee, it's almost as if we should be writing the words out instead of writing one letter variable names. Funny how programmers found this to be good practice and mathematicians still write with a notation that's purposefully unreadable.

Post by beagle3 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:32 PM UTC

iopq wrote: post #50

chilie wrote: post #13

These are just issues that someone unfamiliar with a field would face. None of them are problems for those of us in the field. First, the expectation thing. He's using a special case, E(X), and complaining that the more general case doesn't follow the general case. It's like saying "Well the plural of mouse is mice but the plural of house isn't hice!". The general definition of expectation (for a discrete probability…

I have taken ten years of math in school and then calculus, discrete math, linear algebra. That's all useless if I want to follow math in a simple research paper because they're using notation common in THAT field and it has nothing to do with the notation in another math field. And it's all V hat superscript pi subscript h. It's not like code, where I get descriptive variable names. And you thought pi meant pi? No,…

    integrate(f(x)dx,dx)
    sum f(x_i) for i=1..n
    f(x_1) + f(x_2) + .... + f(x_3)

Post by _dps » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:53 PM UTC

pwdisswordfish wrote: post #58

adrianratnapala wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, and the deeper source of the authers beef seems to be that he wants mathematics to be about textual rules. Now that's a fine thing in a computer language -- and there are philosophers who say mathematical truth is no more than computation. But mathematical notation is for humans to talk about things that have meanings that humans can understand. The fact is that E[X^2] is natural way of an important co…

> Now that's a fine thing in a computer language -- and there are philosophers who say mathematical truth is no more than computation. But mathematical notation is for humans to talk about things that have meanings that humans can understand. Then how come an unfamiliar piece of source code is easier to follow than a mathematics paper using unfamiliar notation? You can look up the definition of each function and lear…

Post by zimbatm » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 1:05 PM UTC

   from url/to/geometric-algebra.pdf import X;