Mathematical Jargon Failures • Hacker News Board

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#71

Post by no_identd » Fri, May 03, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #65

Kalium wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that in my opinion, the standard terms are pretty clear and yes or no create exactly the kind of confusion you're hoping to avoid.

Huh. Positive and negative are sort of notorious in medical tests for creating a confusion: positive is often bad! There are actually three dichotomies here: was the test mistaken, what was its boolean value, and which boolean value means which thing in the world. Saying yes/no still requires a decision about the latter; though it seems clearer to me about this (both the need for interpretation and on suggesting a de…

I've found that the pronunciation of English tends to dissociate the words "positive" and "negative" from their proper meaning, which has led to all sorts of misuse of the words. The following pronunciation isn't 'correct' English pronunciation, but try 'mispronouncing' it that way a few times (out loud) and see if that flips a switch in your head:

Po‑si–t—ive & Ne‑ga–t—ive.

po‑si–t—ing & ne‑ga–t—ing.

Po‑si–t—ed & Ne‑ga–t—ed.

Po‑si–t—ive‑ly & Ne‑ga–t—ive‑ly.

Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of 'positive' and 'negative' numbers, doesn't it?

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#72

Post by Balgair » Fri, May 03, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

no_identd wrote: post #70

Balgair wrote: post #68

In spherical coordinates, the Physicists use Phi for the azimuthal angle, and Theta for the equatorial angle. While the mathematicians use the opposite. That was always fun trying to switch between for the various classes. Additionally, the physicists use 'i' for electrical current, while the electrical engineers use 'j'. Again, very fun trying to remember what is what during finals week.

>Additionally, the physicists use 'i' for electrical current, while the electrical engineers use 'j'. Sir William Rowan Hamilton would like to have a word with you. I think he mumbled something about some bridge or something?

Oh Jesus. Yes, then you have quaternions and octernions.

Never mind all the indices of Taylor Series.

The most beneficial thing that Einstein ever did was getting rid all the Sigmas. He did other things too, of course, but nothing really compares.

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#73

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #31

tzs wrote: post #24

> Often brought up as an example are the topological notions of “open” and “closed” sets. It sounds as if they should be exclusive and exhaustive — surely a set that is open is not closed, and vice versa? — but no, there are sets that are neither open nor closed and other sets that are both For a rant on this see "Hitler Learns Topology" [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyD4p8_y8Kw

That video is funnier than it had any right to be.

[deleted]

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#74

Post by majewsky » Sat, May 04, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

roelschroeven wrote: post #15

majewsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes IT and biology share some jargon, or at least they share the words but not exactly the meaning. Both in IT and biology a collection of trees is called a forest. In IT, if you take a tree and remove the root, the result is a forest. Biologists don't agree.

By the way, did you know that broad-leaved trees are infinitely large during winter? The proof is really easy to do for yourself: In winter, those trees don't have any leaves, so all nodes must be inner nodes, and you can easily show by induction that the height of the tree must be infinite.

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#75

Post by tempguy9999 » Sat, May 04, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #66

tempguy9999 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. I've a book on dynamic programming (Applied Dynamic Programming, Bellman + Dreyfus, seriously over my head unfortunately) which uses missionaries, cannibals and a boat to cross a river (page 97). The authors talk about M cannibals and N missionaries. Note again: he used the letter M for cannibals, not the missionaries, which I note start with that letter. And he could have called the cannibals C but, no. I li…

i, j, k, l, m ,n suggest that this problem is concerned with an integral number of cannibals and missionaries. Usually these letters are assigned in the order of occurrence. If cannibals were introduced first and missionaries second it would be unnatural to assign missionaries an m. Further a c for cannibals would be counter-intuitive because c is often used for constants. > Mathematicians really do make things hard…

1, 2, 3... have a natural ordering.

a, b, c...i, j, k...z do not. Alphabetical ordering is convention and no more than that.

To say, let's apply this convention to a problem to which such an ordering has literally no relevance, and ignore their value as a mnemonic, is bizarre beyond my comprehension.

I suspect some ultra smart people like Bellman, and possibly you, can attach completely arbitrary labels to things and immediately use those. I suspect that's what happened here. But I can't, and I'm pretty sure most people can't. To us, it helps greatly if the label has some relationship to the thing labelled

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#76

Post by jhayward » Sat, May 04, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

jhayward wrote: post #16

nabla9 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concepts and numbers and letters describing them are perfectly ordered. H0 H1 alpha beta Type I Type II Because error is negation of truth, you get H1 result with Type I error.

You say this as though it were helpful.

Too late to edit the above, but this reminded me of the infamous in-joke about category theory use in Haskell: "A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors. What's the problem?" [1]

[1] https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...

Re: Mathematical Jargon Failures

#77

Post by new4thaccount » Sat, May 04, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

jhayward wrote: post #76

jhayward wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this as though it were helpful.

Too late to edit the above, but this reminded me of the infamous in-joke about category theory use in Haskell: "A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors. What's the problem?" [1] [1] https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...

They interviewed one of the Rust main guys for Linux Format a few years ago. I think he said the exact same thing lol.

On another note, I think I just met someone with both a power systems and functional programming background today. Small world :).