Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004)

Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004) by ghettoimp on Monday November 06, 2017 @08:50AM (#15635355)

It is ambiguous because, as you point out, it can be read either as `abs(abs(c)).a.abs(b)` or `abs(abs(c).abs(a).b)`.

A mathematician can of course think about it and know what is meant. But there are many alternate notations that could be used, where such ambiguities don't even occur (e.g., balanced parens).

Autoscaling does seem like a nice solution in this case, which preserves the traditional notation while resolving the ambiguity...

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Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004) by dagw on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @05:42AM (#15642314)

It is ambiguous because, as you point out, it can be read either as `abs(abs(c)).a.abs(b)` or `abs(abs(c).abs(a).b)`

Except in this case the ambiguity comes from typography rather than notation. ‖c‖a|b| for example is exactly the same statement with different typography and is a lot less ambiguous. The problem here isn't math notation, but trying to apply that notation using only pure ASCII.

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