Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

news.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 58 posts

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#32
The ordinary language expression "six times four" [and a wasted opportunity to use Polish notation]. After that "24" and I don't mean some picture of countable things but just the abstraction called "24".

Even after reading the poll answers none of the this-or-that options even prompt an image of a grouping. What makes algebraic notation useful is that it abstracts away the need to model the calculation further in most cases. There's no need to ponder "x lots of y or y lots of x". That's good because "lots" and "of" are more muddied. concepts than "times". My fourth grade teacher could explain "times" by giving examples of timesing. Examples of lotsing and ofing are harder to come by.

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#36
When I saw "6x4", my immediate thought was a "six by four" matrix. So, by convention, this means 6 rows and 4 columns, corresponding to e.g. 6 observations of 4 variables each (from a statistician's perspective). The closest answer I could find here was "six lots of four."

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#39
post #35

I'll throw in another vote for the "six-by-four area" group, this time from communicating the sizes of lego pieces to my brother while we were building things. I also see a malformed attempt at typing in a hexademical number.

Those were quite literally the first two things to come into my mind after "6 times 4", right down to Lego's with my brother.

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#40

When I saw "6x4", my immediate thought was a "six by four" matrix. So, by convention, this means 6 rows and 4 columns, corresponding to e.g. 6 observations of 4 variables each (from a statistician's perspective). The closest answer I could find here was "six lots of four."

Definitely a matrix... * is for multiplication ;)
Post reply on HN