Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD

Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD 4 days ago

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To be fair, if math did have version numbers, we could abandon a lot of hideous notational cruft / symbol overloading, and use tau instead of pi. Math notation is arguably considerably worse than perl -- can you imagine if perl practically required a convention of single-letter variable names everywhere? What modern language designer would make it so placing two variable names right next to each other denotes multiplication? Sheer insanity.

Consider how vastly more accessible programming has become from 1950 until the present. Imagine if math had undergone a similar transition.

vovavili 4 days ago

Math personally "clicked" to me when I started to use Python and R for mathematical operations instead of the conventional arcane notation. I did make me wonder why we insist on forcing kids and young adults to struggle through particularly counter-intuitive ways to express mathematical concepts just because of historical baggage, and I am glad to hear now that I am not the only one who thinks this way.

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tyg13 4 days ago

What in the Hacker News in this comment?

Mathematical notation evolved to its modern state over centuries. It's optimized heavily for its purpose. Version numbers? You're being facetious, right?

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  • 0xDEAFBEAD 4 days ago

    >evolved

    Yes, it evolved. It wasn't designed.

    >Version numbers?

    Without version numbers, it has to be backwards-compatible, making it difficult to remove cruft. What would programming be like if all the code you wrote needed to work as IBM mainframe assembly?

    Tau is a good case study. Everyone seems to agree tau is better than pi. How much adoption has it seen? Is this what "heavy optimization" looks like?

    It took hundreds of years for Arabic numerals to replace Roman numerals in Europe. A medieval mathematician could have truthfully said: "We've been using Roman numerals for hundreds of years; they work fine." That would've been stockholm syndrome. I get the same sense from your comment. Take a deep breath and watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgzQuE1pR1w

    >You're being facetious, right?

    I'm being provocative. Not facetious. "Strong opinions, weakly held."

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    • Someone 4 days ago

      > Without version numbers, it has to be backwards-compatible

      If there’s one thing that mathematical notation is NOT, it’s backwards compatible. Fields happily reuse symbols from other fields with slightly or even completely different meanings.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... has lots of examples, for example

      ÷ (division sign)

      Widely used for denoting division in Anglophone countries, it is no longer in common use in mathematics and its use is "not recommended". In some countries, it can indicate subtraction.

      ~ (tilde)

      1. Between two numbers, either it is used instead of ≈ to mean "approximatively equal", or it means "has the same order of magnitude as".

      2. Denotes the asymptotic equivalence of two functions or sequences.

      3. Often used for denoting other types of similarity, for example, matrix similarity or similarity of geometric shapes.

      4. Standard notation for an equivalence relation.

      5. In probability and statistics, may specify the probability distribution of a random variable. For example, X∼N(0,1) means that the distribution of the random variable X is standard normal.

      6. Notation for proportionality. See also ∝ for a less ambiguous symbol.

      Individual mathematicians even are known to have broken backwards compatibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematical_notati...

      * Euler used i to represent the square root of negative one (√-1) although he earlier used it as an infinite number*

      Even simple definitions have changed over time, for example:

      - how numbers are written

      - is zero a number?

      - is one a number?

      - is one a prime number?

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      • 9rx 4 days ago

        > Fields happily reuse symbols from other fields with slightly or even completely different meanings.

        Symbol reuse doesn't imply a break in backwards compatibility. As you suggest with "other fields", context allows determining how the symbols are used. It is quite common in all types of languages to reuse symbols for different purposes, relying on context to identify what purpose is in force.

        Backwards incompatibility tells that something from the past can no longer be used with modern methods. Mathematical notation from long ago doesn't much look like what we're familiar with today, but we can still make use of it. It wasn't rendered inoperable by modern notation.

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    • tyg13 4 days ago

      Mathematical notation isn't at all backwards compatible, and it certainly isn't consistent. It doesn't have to be, because the execution environment is the abstract machine of your mind, not some rigidly defined ISA or programming language.

      > Everyone seems to agree tau is better than pi. How much adoption has it seen?

      > It took hundreds of years for Arabic numerals to replace Roman numerals in Europe.

      What on earth does this have to do with version numbers for math? I appreciate this is Hacker News and we're all just pissing into the wind, but this is extra nonsensical to me.

      The reason math is slow to change has nothing to do with backwards compatibility. We don't need to institute Math 2.0 to change mathematical notation. If you want to use tau right now, the only barrier is other people's understanding. I personally like to use it, and if I anticipate its use will be confusing to a reader, I just write `tau = 2pi` at the top of the paper. Still, others have their preference, so I'm forced to understand papers (i.e. the vast majority) which still use pi.

      Which points to the real reason math is slow to change: people are slow to change. If things seem to be working one way, we all have to be convinced to do something different, and that takes time. It also requires there to actually be a better way.

      > Is this what "heavy optimization" looks like?

      I look forward to your heavily-optimized Math 2.0 which will replace existing mathematical notation and prove me utterly wrong.

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hansvm 4 days ago

If the compiler forbade syntactic ambiguity from implicit multiplication and had a sensible LSP allowing it to be rendered nicely, I don't think that'd be such a bad thing. Depending on the task at hand you might prefer composition or some other operation, but when reducing character count allows the pattern recognition part of our brain to see the actual structure at hand instead of wading through character soup it makes understanding code much easier.

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  • 0xDEAFBEAD 4 days ago

    Yep, this explains why the APL programming language was so ridiculously successful.

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