Mathematical Jargon Failures
blog.plover.com
Mathematical Jargon Failures
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Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#2The referenced article, https://blog.plover.com/lang/jargon-failures.html, on jargon failures is a nice read as well!
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#3A wonderful related talk and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473199
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#4The Type I and Type II errors is especially hurtful to me: I am totally unable to remember which is which and each time I read an article containing them I think: well, I am probably going to get it wrong again but I cannot bother to check the definition one more time... who cares?
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#5The Type I and Type II errors is especially hurtful to me: I am totally unable to remember which is which and each time I read an article containing them I think: well, I am probably going to get it wrong again but I cannot bother to check the definition one more time... who cares?
In particular when one could just call them "false acceptance of null" and "false rejection of null", and abbreviate it to FAN and FRN, or so. How hard is that.
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#6I can see the point, but I don't think it's a problem as long as the concept is well-defined.
It's only a matter of getting used to don't assume, for example, "open" and "closed" to be mutually exclusive.
There are other fields that don't have the privilege of this formal setting: I expect the concept of "species" to be very important in biology, but there isn't a clear definition of that (yet) [0].
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#7The Type I and Type II errors is especially hurtful to me: I am totally unable to remember which is which and each time I read an article containing them I think: well, I am probably going to get it wrong again but I cannot bother to check the definition one more time... who cares?
Same here, and some definitions named by people's names. I totally understand the need to attribute and respect people's work, but a more descriptive name is almost always easier to remember and talk about.
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#8The referenced article, https://blog.plover.com/lang/jargon-failures.html , on jargon failures is a nice read as well!
IT is full of jargon as well. Where else would it make sense to cherry-pick commits into a branch and then ask others to pull that branch into their repository? :)
My German team has a running gag where, when a sentence turns out especially jargon-riddled, we translate all the jargon words into German, as literally as possible. The result is always hilarious.
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#9> That's right, ellipses are not elliptic curves, and elliptic curves are not elliptical. I don't know who was responsible for this idiocy, but if I ever meet them I'm going to kick them in the ass.
The referenced Wikipedia page contains a perfectly valid explanation for the term "elliptic curves", and a little googling reveals that it was Legendre who's responsible for "this idiocy".
Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures
#10> That's right, ellipses are not elliptic curves, and elliptic curves are not elliptical. I don't know who was responsible for this idiocy, but if I ever meet them I'm going to kick them in the ass. The referenced Wikipedia page contains a perfectly valid explanation for the term "elliptic curves", and a little googling reveals that it was Legendre who's responsible for "this idiocy".
Well, if I ever meet this Legender guy, I'm gonna kick his ass.
You can tell him I said that.