Re:Confessions of a Math Idiot
by thunk on Thursday July 30, 2009 @09:54PM
(#733582)
I thought someone might try that tack. Math is completely decoupled from its representation, so you can use whatever notation you want and not lose anything. I'm not gonna guess to what extent linguistic communication is bound up with its representation, but it's certainly more than math, meaning meaning can be lost. So your analogy doesn't work. Also, since mathematical notation is a tool primarily to facilitate mechanical transformations, and only secondarily for communication, you should use whatever lets you think biggest.
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Re:Confessions of a Math Idiot
by timwiseman on Thursday July 30, 2009 @10:35PM
(#733625)
An excellent point as long as you do not need to actually communicate your results to anyone. As soon as you do, it becomes precisely as bound as language is.