Re:Ask HN: Why did you quit learning programming?
by JonChesterfield on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @06:27PM
(#32076526)
What do you mean by 0!=1 here? It reads as the integers zero and one are not equal, which is true. I'm struggling to guess what established rules that could break.
Re:Ask HN: Why did you quit learning programming?
by rafamaddd on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @07:15PM
(#32077023)
> It reads as the integers zero and one are not equal, which is true
That's not what 0!=1 means in math, the ! means factorial, which is to multiply by decreasing positive integers. Here's the definition:
n! = n x (n -1) x (n - 2) x . . . x 2 x 1
So, for people starting to learn calculus/math, being told that 0!=1 makes no sense
Re:Ask HN: Why did you quit learning programming?
by 3836293648 on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @08:44PM
(#32077693)
And that's why we need spacing. 0 != 1 is very different from 0! = 1
Re:Ask HN: Why did you quit learning programming?
by dc-programmer on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @12:27AM
(#32079047)
Right I forgot my audience
Re:Ask HN: Why did you quit learning programming?
by JonChesterfield on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @05:30PM
(#32158246)
Ah. ! for factorial was not an obvious parse. I suspect it has alternative meanings in mathematics as well.
Most students really dislike anything that appears arbitrary which I think plays into this. One pre-med student I knew despised math after being taught 0!=1 because it seemed seemed completely made up to him and broke established rules.
Part of the onus falls on instructor to clear up areas like this (e.g. explain the cardinality of the set containing just the empty set is 1, 0!=1 allows for many formulas to be expressed tersely, etc). The other component of this is that the students who dislike ambiguity self select out of the program.