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Talk:Mathematical notation

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938:'formal' in the strict sense of the word. By "notation" I just mean, a symbol or symbolic expression intended to have a precise semantic meaning. (I say, "intended", because there are always philosophical questions about certain things.) In this sense, I don't consider, say, Venn diagrams to be notation, because they aren't intended to have a precise meaning, there's simply visualisation of certain things about sets. The same goes for the various physical ways of getting a hold on Green's theorem (or Stoke's theorem, generally) through visualising flux and vector fields. These are more pictures intended to evoke a concept, idea, or thought process. But drawing a picture of a ball with flux arrows and drawing it chopped up into pieces as a way to illustrate Stoke's theorem is not "notation" to me, because it's not intended to have a precise meaning. Confusing the two can be deadly, e.g. when the picture leads you to a false conclusion. I certainly think these things are useful, I think any math person is lying to say they don't use tools like this all the time, but they're not what I would call notation. Maybe this is just a disagreement over terms. 762:- a visualization of the integrals of T and U, which are the summations over a domain which is plane A, with altitudes = the values of the sums of T and U over the area A. Then the straightforward readout of the altitudes along a contour D, summed over the contour projected on A is the value of the integral. It's very concrete this way, and the notation in the Green's theorem article overwhelms the basic idea of a fluid set of T and U (Newton's fluents). Now I admit that the concreteness of the example is probably not in the spirit of a formalism, but Newton did not use the notation that we were trained in, and obviously did not think of things the way we have been trained in. Once we have the conditions 264: 254: 233: 200: 346: 191: 1330: 514:, unless they are given a precise definition which can be codified. This is true, e.g. in some areas of graph theory and commutative diagrams. Look, I'm not telling you not to use these things, I'm just saying strictly speaking, they're not notation. They're other kinds of aids. So, just keep the distinction clear. 1046:
of a programming language. What is then implemented on the computer is these rules, the semantics, using the built-in semantics of, usually, a register machine. What the compiler actually does is translate a program written in programming language A to a program written in programming language B, and
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Why shouldn't other sensory records and reactions help in notation? What do you think that the marks on clay tablets were? Although some mathematicians, like Galois and Ulam actually did everything in their heads before committing to paper, other mathematicians found writing, internet, letters, etc.
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In any case, saying that a compiler implements the rules of evaluating expressions, i.e. that a compiler implements the semantics is false. The compiler only transforms the program or expression from one form to another, hopefully in a way that is executable by the machine. The machine can then be
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I would add that informal mathematical discourse (writing, letters), does not preclude the use of formal notation. And not using other nonformalised notation doesn't mean one is left with only "doing everything is one's head" (???) You don't seem to realise that a lot of formal notation is used in
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I don't think I mean to be that restrictive. And I don't think our difference of opinion is based on a distinction between formalism and constructivism. Informal mathematical discourse (which is basically all mathematical discourse) incorporates formal notation...very little actual mathematics is
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Newton did not use our modern notation, true. But, he did mean for the notation he used to have a definite meaning. Of course, if you can develop any of these visualisation processes into formalised language, fine. But I think a clear line should be drawn between formal notation and visualisation
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then our imaginations need to find T and U. What we need in a notation is for it to help us transform one thing into a related thing which we can solve. Now we can either work it all out with individual cases, laboriously, where a text-based notation might not help us, until we have translated it
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Obviously, you didn't read what I wrote. I said they are useful AIDS in discovering and learning math, but there is a difference between AIDS and strict notation itself. "Mouse clicks on a web page are not 'notation'". Venn diagrams help visualise logical statements and statements about sets, but
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often A is a high-level language, such as C or Java, and B is machine language (either the native one or one of a virtual machine). The semantics of the machine language depend on how the computer has been put together and since this is mostly electronics, it's not relevant here.
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I don't understand the last section (Isaac Newton?). All these are very useful AIDS in learning mathematics, but does anyone really think visual pictures or tactile or auditory data are really going to become useful NOTATION for precisely expressing thoughts?
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The key idea is consistency of notation - the rules of the grammar, and the parser which detects conformance with the rules. It takes a mathematical POV to utilize the notation consistently. Do you think a sentence should be crafted for the article?
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I think the other article is still long enough to stand on its own, and the topics are sufficiently different that someone looking for "abuse of notation" may be confused if they end up here. The other article does need some work, though. — Carl
949:, I do not mean formal in the sense of the formalist school of philosophy, I mean formal in the sense of symbolic expressions intended to have precise meaning, regardless of whether this occurs in the context of a strict formal system. 1213:
I found this site looking for a description of some various things like a bold letter, a vector etc. and found nothing? Perhaps this page needs a list of what a differential looks like what the times sign looks like etc...
153: 1310:, because it is true that they are related... also, there could be a section here describing it, and then a "Main Article" link. <- That's probably the best. I'll be glad to work on both articles soon =) 541: 849: 806: 754: 711: 1258:(which really needed it). As it stands now, it's fairly slim and could probably fit nicely into a single section here, so I thought I'd add a proposal and see if anyone else had thoughts. 320: 1380: 147: 1235:
This seems like the preface to a more comprehensive article. The subject matter is vast and even collecting together the most common notations with explanations is missing
1385: 1370: 886:, they're visualisation of data, doodling, scribbling, imagining, visualising...all very important, but they don't belong here really because they're not notation. By 530:
It looks like an example is in order. I am trying to illustrate a thinking process in the style of a visualizer. The closest example I can come up with is from the
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implement some of the rules, for example when you use macros in Lisp or Scheme to do computation at compile time, but this is certainly not the whole picture.)
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First of all, what on Earth is a computer language? Without delving further in that, let us assume the author of the piece of text meant programming languages.
44: 204: 1395: 1375: 310: 79: 1302:... I think it would be nicer to have separate articles, and once this article gets more developed, it will be nicer to have them separated. I added a 1400: 1390: 1365: 1035:
A mathematical expression is a sequence of symbols which can be evaluated. ... In a computer language, these rules are implemented by the compilers.
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Maybe we just need a better example of a kind of visualization which is well-defined enough to count as notation? I'm thinking of something like a
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I'd like to insert an example of how the same notation can mean different things in different contexts. Here are a few possibilities:
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You're missing my point. I don't disagree that such things are useful and helpful. I'm not saying don't use them!! All I'm saying is,
913:(me). Clearly there needs to be notation which bespeaks the rules and constraints gathered from the centuries of mathematics and the 660:{\displaystyle \int _{C}Pdx+Qdy=\int \!\!\!\int _{D}\left({\frac {\partial Q}{\partial x}}-{\frac {\partial P}{\partial y}}\right)dA} 277: 238: 168: 960:, which is constructed so it identifies one mathematical object unambiguously, and can be transformed according to precise rules ( 135: 99: 30: 104: 20: 929:, the formal grammar, etc. with a set of requirements for a well-formed set of expressions etc, and its impact on notation. 995: 74: 859:
like the mountain ranges (or definite integrals) to help us solve the problems. Our notations could be more visual. The
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I would have thought that "mathematical notation", by definition, is notation used in mathematics. The discussion at
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15:54, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC) The good thing is that this lays out a program for the improvement of this article.
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What we need instead of the integrals of T and U or the concrete partial derivatives are 2 sets of
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There should be a mention of TeX because it led to the standardization of mathematics typography.
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on Knowledge. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
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If I understand you, what you have in mind for the article is a discussion of the evolution of
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that refers to them. And I bow to all of you who have contributed to this noble subject.
890:, notation is formal. What you're talking about it GREAT, just don't call it "notation". 910: 450: 1354: 1311: 1281: 1170: 950: 939: 926: 899: 891: 871: 523: 515: 483: 408: 989: 957: 874:
map could be used a lot more. What else might we learn with such added notation?
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processes. They are BOTH useful and complementary; they are NOT the same.
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The rules of evaluating the value of expressions is contained in the
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used to execute the program, and this is where evaluation happens.
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indicates that this may not be so. The article doesn't help here.
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The current claim under the section Expressions is simply wrong:
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into a standard notation, or we might build up a toolbox of
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Mouse clicks on a web page have helped the User interface.
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So the divide we are speaking across is that between
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Now we need to imagine functions T and U such that :
281:, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of 844:{\displaystyle U={\frac {\partial P}{\partial x}}} 843: 801:{\displaystyle T={\frac {\partial Q}{\partial x}}} 800: 749:{\displaystyle U={\frac {\partial P}{\partial x}}} 748: 706:{\displaystyle T={\frac {\partial Q}{\partial x}}} 705: 659: 1159:) are very different but have parallel notation. 493:Venn diagrams help to visualize logic statements 33:for general discussion of the article's subject. 1381:Knowledge level-5 vital articles in Mathematics 586: 584: 582: 501:to be useful in propagating their discoveries. 174: 8: 1254:I just gutted quite a bit of the article at 188: 1027:About evaluating expressions and computers 227: 1386:Start-Class vital articles in Mathematics 821: 813: 778: 770: 726: 718: 683: 675: 626: 603: 592: 549: 543: 1054:(In certain special cases, the compiler 986:Talk:Mathematics#Tautologous definition? 1371:Knowledge vital articles in Mathematics 1337:. Okay, removed the proposal then. -- 229: 1163:Personally I like #2 the best. — Carl 7: 275:This article is within the scope of 218:It is of interest to the following 23:for discussing improvements to the 1396:High-priority mathematics articles 1376:Start-Class level-5 vital articles 832: 824: 789: 781: 737: 729: 694: 686: 637: 629: 614: 606: 14: 444:Hindu-Arabic notation for numbers 399:some of this properly belongs in 295:Knowledge:WikiProject Mathematics 1401:Knowledge pages with to-do lists 1391:Start-Class mathematics articles 1366:Knowledge level-5 vital articles 1328: 392:Give proper definition. ---: --> 344: 298:Template:WikiProject Mathematics 262: 252: 231: 198: 189: 45:Click here to start a new topic. 1084:Anyone care to comment on this 315:This article has been rated as 1075:) 09:36, August 29, 2007 (UTC) 406:The first use of a symbol for 1: 1287:02:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC) 1268:22:33, 11 February 2017 (UTC) 1103:Example of differing notation 974:16:59, 5 September 2011 (UTC) 945:Just to be doubly clear — by 884:those things are not notation 289:and see a list of open tasks. 42:Put new text under old text. 1230:02:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC) 1204:16:39, 23 October 2008 (UTC) 1190:16:38, 23 October 2008 (UTC) 1180:Please: Write sin, not sin. 1176:13:12, 23 October 2008 (UTC) 1347:15:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC) 1098:14:15, 23 August 2008 (UTC) 1002:| 04:03, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC) 50:New to Knowledge? 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