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A comment on Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learning how to think. Parent comment

Re:Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learni... by bjl on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @12:09PM (#14745324)
In higher level math symbols are definitely used for their expressive power.
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Re:Math education: It’s not about numbers, it’s about learni... by dahart on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @01:45PM (#14746218)
I agree if we are talking about syntactically expressive power.

I was talking about conceptually expressive power. Symbols have no conceptually expressive power at all, we assign meaning to them by describing what they do using familiar language, and previously defined symbols. The transitive definition of any symbol is completely and only defined from first principles via familiar language.

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