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I find it strange to compare "math" with one programming language. Mathematics is a huge and diverse field, with many subcommunities and hence also differing notation.

Your rant would be akin to this if the sides are reversed: "It's surprising how many different ways there are to describe the same thing. Eg: see all the notations for dictionaries (hash tables? associative arrays? maps?) or lists (vectors? arrays?).

You don't have "the manual" of programming languages. "


Not the original commenter, but I 100% agree that it's weird we have so many ways to describe dictionaries/hash tables/maps/etc. and lists.


> You don't have "the manual" of programming languages. "

Well, we kinda do when you can say "this python program" the problem with a lot of math is that you can't even tell which manual to look up.


Someone not educated in programming would not know that a given text is Python source code.


Same problem, but unlike math notation, it is MUCH clearer and even my 10 year old newphew can tell python from javascript and C.


I would wager that a vast majority of people on the planet could not distinguish Python from JavaScript from C.


When it says "this python" program, they dont need to, it says its python. Math notation doesn't have that clarity.


For me one is that one can write `for i = 1:3` is one when `=` means assignment otherwise (at least `for i in 1:3` is available.


This seems like a counter-example. The `=` was for time the only syntax (presumably taken by MATLAB--which in turn adapted it from IDL/Fortran--that initially Julia was heavily influenced from) with `in` (and `∈`) added afterwards (`in` being the only syntax used by the much more popular {Python, R}). Imo `=` alone was fine since as you say `=` means assignment, just within `for` it's an assignment applied iteratively. Opposite to that, `in` is also used as membership operator (`1 in [1, 2, 3]`) that is entirely different from its `for` role.



And sometimes one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.... (Not to defend terrorism, but it's just not that simple)


Actually in math parlance, the map G \to GL(V) is the representation while V is the underlying module, and yeah its elements are vectors.


No you literally can (and the attackers did) change version 44 (the tag for it) to point to a different compromised commmit


Yes, you're right. I wasn't able to double-check as the repo was deleted at the time. That said, AIUI making the tags read-only would still often be vulnerable to semantic-version exploitation.


> Nobody bothers explaining why the primes are spaced like they are

I take it that means you also haven't taken (m)any number theory classes then ;-). Because people wildly care about that.

This is in a sense the background of another well-known conjecture, the Riemann conjecture...


Fair point, and correct (just one class). Myself, I'm fine with a field being important because well it's a mystery of the universe and well we just couldn't not scratch the itch. But I know that not all askers want answers like that, so I was attempting to dust off the "it's also useful" neurons :)


Which robber baron do you consider to be responsible for curing polio?


Bill Gates, who contributed around 30% of the total money spent on the world eradication effort so far


So he didn't create the vaccine, and he didn't provide most of the money spent on eradication, but he did sit down for a nice long dinner with an administration that is now pulling funding from the WHO and other international health organizations.

In the meanwhile, the technocrat administration we just got is putting the anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr up as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The progress we have made on eliminating Polio is at risk directly because of actions taken by this crop of billionaires. That is more on Musk and Zuckerberg than Gates, but these people cannot be trusted to use the power and influence they have for anything other than self-enrichment.


Which do you think is more likely, that Bill Gates sat down with the administration to try to convince Trump to keep funding Gate's life work, or that Gates talked to Trump to end polio funding?

Trump bad, has nothing to do with Gates or Zuck. If you blame them for trying to prevent Trump from doing bad things, you should look into what they will benefit from and how they spend their money


Marc Zuckerberg being popular is not the same as his platform being popular.


I am a professor for algebra at a research university. I make a point out of teaching my students that `a/b` is NOT the same as multiplying `a` by the multiplicative inverse of `b`.

The standard example is that we have a well-defined and useful notion of division in the ring Z/nZ for n any positive integer even in cases were we "divide" by an element that has no multiplicative inverse. Easy example: take n=8 then you can "divide" 4+nZ by 2+nZ just fine (and in fact turn Z/nZ into a Euclidean ring), even though 2+nZ is not a unit, i.e. admits no multiplicative inverse.


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