Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004)

Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004) by bjourne on Monday November 06, 2017 @07:22AM (#15634945)

I have wondered if not postfix is more suitable for writing math expressions. Yes, for simple expressions like 2*3+4 postfix is cumbersome, but for more complicated ones I think it has benefits. F.e: "k fac ln 2 ^ -1 ^" would be "1/ln(k!)^2"

It is easy to see that the postfix expression is just a composition of a bunch of functions "fac ln 2 ^ -1 ^", but not so easy in the infix case. It is also easy to derive the inverse of it: "-1 ^ 1/2 ^ exp fac^-1"

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Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004) by contravariant on Monday November 06, 2017 @10:19AM (#15636034)

I'm fairly sure infix notation is easier to read for associative operations. It's hard to beat the simplicity of a + (b + c) = (a + b) + c.

I'm also not convinced that (a x n ^ *) is going to catch on as a replacement for ax^n.

I think some kind of postfix notation could be nice for category theory though, it always confuses me that X -f-> Y -g-> Z is a diagram for gf, not fg.

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Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004) by Grustaf on Monday November 06, 2017 @03:29PM (#15638741)

With infix notation you can clearly group terms and factors in your head. Postfix makes it almost impossible.

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