Mathematical Notation Is Awful

Re:Mathematical Notation Is Awful by zimbatm on Sunday July 31, 2016 @09:05AM (#12196797)

If I could fix one things in Maths, it would be to introduce an explicit import statement. Right now it's very hard to work back what the symbols mean in a specific context unless you're familiar with the field.

   from url/to/geometric-algebra.pdf import X;

I don't mind the overloading too much and it would always be possible to alias symbols in case two or more fields are user together.

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Re:Mathematical Notation Is Awful by ivan_ah on Sunday July 31, 2016 @11:18AM (#12197317)

Very cool idea!

I think this would work both at the logical level (e.g., the concept of azimutal angle in a xyz-coordinate system) and as a stylesheet level (theta for physcisits, and phi for mathematicians).

Such annotations would really help with browsing math content—you can see what prerequisites concepts are used in a paper from its import statements, without the need to read the whole thing. Also, you could browse from the other end (reverse-imports / uses), looking for docs that make use of a given concept.

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