A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs • Hacker News Board

Re: A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs

#101

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #97

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I write mathematics to share with mathematicians, not machines. Would you ask a poet to make the same sacrifice for machine comprehension?

A poem can mean whatever any reader wants it to. In math objective truth matters.

> A poem can mean whatever any reader wants it to. In math objective truth matters.

Maybe? Penelope Maddy, et al, have convinced me that this isn’t as clear as we’d like:

http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/bio/DualistVol15_Maddy.pd...

Re: A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs

#102

Post by Xophmeister » Sat, Jan 31, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

bshanks wrote: post #95

Xophmeister wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

j? Electrical engineer?

In the context of electrical engineering, j is often used to denote the imaginary unit, that is, something such that j^2 = -1; in other words it's the same as what is usually called 'i'. But, in the context of the split-complex numbers, j is something such that j^2 = 1, and i suppose it is writen as 'j' to distinguish it from 'i'. So, the 'j' used here is different from the 'j' used in electrical engineering. ( https…

Interesting: Never heard of 'split-complex numbers' before. Thanks for letting me know :)

Re: A Computer Scientist Tells Mathematicians How to Write Proofs

#103

Post by gnaritas » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:24 AM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #99

gnaritas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, words are better than notation, they're self descriptive; there's a reason we communicate with words instead of pictographs; words are more flexible and easier to create abstractions with than symbols.

Words are less precise, so they can be used to approximate ideas we don't clearly understand.

Words can be either less or more precise, that's their power.