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Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

nautil.us

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Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#371

Post by JdeBP »

woopwoop wrote: post #28

I don't think descriptive names per se would be especially helpful. The challenge of understanding a concept typically dwarfs the challenge of remembering a name. Some people, though, have so many things named after them that Googling for concepts can become challenging. In my thesis, I needed to use something called the Steiner point, which is sometimes also called the Steiner curvature centroid, although I didn't k…

Part of the problem is the "Googling for concepts" idea. What did Google Scholar tell you? And did adding the word "barycentre" improve that?

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#372

Post by JdeBP »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #48

This falls a little flat with me. Let's consider an example from the article- a Kähler manifold. I'm not a geometer, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it says that a "Kähler manifold is a manifold with three mutually compatible structures: a complex structure, a Riemannian structure, and a symplectic structure." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4hler_manifold Two of those things are not named after a person, and…

What Wikipedia says is not the best of arguments, for the simple reason that mathematics articles on Wikipedia have long suffered, as Wikipedia writers themselves have argued about for many years, from the problem of diving straight into jargon in the first sentence. It's fairly well-trodden territory by this point, and things are a lot better than they used to be, but part of the tension is between "But one has to understand these other things before one can understand this article anyway." and "An encyclopaedia is read by people who do not understand the subject, because if they understood it they wouldn't be trying to use an encyclopaedia to find out about it.".

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#373

Post by sriku »

yeellow wrote: post #355
sriku wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least having a word like "filter" in it narrows down the choices even if it doesn't make it unique. If instead it was "Bloom's construction" or "Bloom's algorithm", or "Tim's procedure", we'll be at a total loss to even guess what it was about, which is what happens with a lot of math starting from "Pythagorus theorem", anyone instantly recall "Apollonius' theorem", "Ackerman function", "Euler's function"?. If "Fe…

But could you propose a better name for the math terms you mentioned? Fermat last theorem for example is famous because of its history and not significance and I don't think any other name would be better. Pythagorus theorem - how to call it with a short and significant name? The only option I can think of is "a squared plus b squared equals c squared" which is hardly a good name :)

The alternative "Euclidean distance" is already half way there and is better since we at least know it's about "distance". At this point, offering any alternative will feel alien and unfamiliar, but "Linear distance" works for me if I feel the need to push Euclid out as well.

edit: If I want to talk about distance in a curved space, we already have a well named "Geodesic distance".

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#374

Post by xxs »

mr_toad wrote: post #325
elgenie wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling “gaussian noise” “normal noise”, like the associated distribution, would not lose any precision

It would be harder to search for, and to a lay person it still doesn’t explain what it is. Even worse, given the ambiguity of the word ‘normal’ it could easily cause misapprehensions. Ask the person on the street what normal noise is and they’re probably going to answer in decibels. At least Gaussian noise is easily googled.

I'd consider 'normal noise' to be 'white noise'

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#375

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

kazinator wrote: post #41

> Imagine how much steeper the learning curve would be in medicine or law if they used the same naming conventions, with the same number of layers to peel back: I she kidding? Off the top of my head: diseases named after people. Parkinson's disease. McArdle's disease. Bell's Palsy, Hodgkin's Lymphoma, ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_anatomical_parts... In Law, precedents are referred to by plaintiff a…

The whole argument seems to be a plea for better mnemonics, but "clearer" meanings aren't often that much clearer because of the ambiguity introduced (and often hidden).

When law does use descriptive terms it's actively damaging to lay people. Too many laws are written where common words mean something similar to but importantly different from what they mean in the field. So then as a layperson you think you know what is legally required to do, but (surprise!) you don't.

This is why in programming, we're so often suggested to name new things non-descriptive terms. As you replace things and split things out and combine them together, you introduce tons of ambiguity if you name things too descriptively.

I'd read the evolution of math to name things how they do to be a collective choice for precision, rather than a move for people's egos.

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#376

Post by scsilver »

crazygringo wrote: post #55

Hard disagree. Once you get to the advanced levels of any field, terminology being "accessible" doesn't really matter, but being precise does . Areas like philosophy and law actually suffer in my opinion when they overload common words with uncommon meanings, or descend into weird disambiguations that depend on suffixes. For example, in philosophy there's "contractarianism" and "contractualism", and trying to remembe…

Simply being able to look up the luminarie's name, years of life, and location helps alot with defining an ideas part our knowledge evolution. I hear a theory made by someone in england in th 17-1800's I already know this theory has probably sprang out of the enlightenment and should looking at contemporary works for context of the thinking at that time.

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#377

Post by Grustaf »

chongli wrote: post #254
Grustaf wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, CS is more like an extension of a very tiny corner of maths. And practically speaking, most computer scientists and 99% of programmers are terrible at math, to the point that they don’t even genuinely understand basic undergraduate concepts from linear algebra.

Working computer scientists (academics) are definitely not terrible at math. There are a great deal of complicated proofs involved in areas such as complexity theory, algorithms, and data structures. Their jobs are not altogether different from those of mathematicians.

It might be complicated, but as far as I’ve seen, not in a mathematical sense. Perhaps you have some examples?

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#378

Post by diffeomorphism »

sriku wrote: post #373
yeellow wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But could you propose a better name for the math terms you mentioned? Fermat last theorem for example is famous because of its history and not significance and I don't think any other name would be better. Pythagorus theorem - how to call it with a short and significant name? The only option I can think of is "a squared plus b squared equals c squared" which is hardly a good name :)

The alternative "Euclidean distance" is already half way there and is better since we at least know it's about "distance". At this point, offering any alternative will feel alien and unfamiliar, but "Linear distance" works for me if I feel the need to push Euclid out as well. edit: If I want to talk about distance in a curved space, we already have a well named "Geodesic distance".

That sounds like a different theorem. While it conincides with sums of squares of distances for the Euclidean setting, for the case of a sphere or other manifold it is decidedly about triangles, not so much distances.

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#379

Post by kergonath »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #268
kergonath wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have only so many Riemann theorems before it becomes confusing, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Leon... > Many of these entities have been given simple and ambiguous names such as Euler's function, Euler's equation, and Euler's formula. > In an effort to avoid naming everything after Euler, some discoveries and theorems are attributed to the first person to have proved them after Euler.

You know you've made it when you need a Wikipedia article to keep track of what you've done. Gauss' is similar, if maybe a bit shorter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Car...

Re: Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

#380

Post by thaumasiotes »

sudosysgen wrote: post #323
thaumasiotes wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shanghai is the biggest seaside city The name is much older than the size.

I'm guessing that at that point it was also the most notable one, or notable for the fact it was in the ses.

Definitely not; Fujian is the area with the strongest historical involvement with the sea.
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