Mathematics Stack Exchange
Mathematics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [notation]

Questions on the meaning, history, and usage of mathematical symbols and notation. Please remember to mention where (book, paper, webpage, etc.) you encountered any mathematical notation you are asking about.

Before asking a question on the site, please check if you can find your answer in Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols or the book A History of Mathematical Notations.

Alternatively, a textbook or paper usually takes the time to explain the notation they're using; please remember to mention where you've seen the notation you are asking about.

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Why do mathematicians use single-letter variables?

I have much more experience programming than I do with advanced mathematics, so perhaps this is just a comfort thing with me, but I often get frustrated when I try to follow mathematical notation. Specifically, I get frustrated trying to keep track…
eater
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Is '$10$' a magical number or I am missing something?

It's a hilarious witty joke that points out how every base is '$10$' in its base. Like, \begin{align} 2 &= 10\ \text{(base 2)} \\ 8 &= 10\ \text{(base 8)} \end{align} My question is if whoever invented the decimal system had chosen $9$…
Shubham
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Alternative notation for exponents, logs and roots?

If we have $$ x^y = z $$ then we know that $$ \sqrt[y]{z} = x $$ and $$ \log_x{z} = y .$$ As a visually-oriented person I have often been dismayed that the symbols for these three operators look nothing like one another, even though they all…
friedo
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Most ambiguous and inconsistent phrases and notations in maths

What are some examples of notations and words in maths which have been overused or abused to the point of them being almost completely ambiguous when presented in new contexts? For instance, a function $f$: $f^{-1}(x)$ can be an inverse and a…
Frank Vel
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Why does mathematical convention deal so ineptly with multisets?

Many statements of mathematics are phrased most naturally in terms of multisets. For example: Every positive integer can be uniquely expressed as the product of a multiset of primes. But this theorem is usually phrased more clumsily, without…
MJD
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What are some examples of notation that really improved mathematics?

I've always felt that the concise, suggestive nature of the written language of mathematics is one of the reasons it can be so powerful. Off the top of my head I can think of a few notational conventions that simplify problem statements and ideas,…
Patrick
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Difference between "≈", "≃", and "≅"

In mathematical notation, what are the usage differences between the various approximately-equal signs "≈", "≃", and "≅"? The Unicode standard lists all of them inside the Mathematical Operators Block. ≈ : ALMOST EQUAL TO (U+2248) ≃ :…
GOTO 0
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How Do You Actually Do Your Mathematics?

Better yet, what I'm asking is how do you actually write your mathematics? I think I need to give brief background: Through most of my childhood, I'd considered myself pretty good at math, up through the high school level. I easily followed…
Uticensis
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Element-wise (or pointwise) operations notation?

Is there a notation for element-wise (or pointwise) operations? For example, take the element-wise product of two vectors x and y (in Matlab, x .* y, in numpy x*y), producing a new vector of same length z, where $z_i = x_i * y_i$ . In mathematical…
levesque
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Much less than, what does that mean?

What exactly does $\ll$ mean? I am familiar that this symbol means much less than. ...but what exactly does "much less than" mean? (Or the corollary, $\gg$) On Wikipedia, the example they use is that $1\ll 9999999999$ But my thought on that is that…
user285523
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6 answers

What did Alan Turing mean when he said he didn't fully understand dy/dx?

Alan Turing's notebook has recently been sold at an auction house in London. In it he says this: Written out: The Leibniz notation $\frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}x}$ I find extremely difficult to understand in spite of it having been the one I …
Matta
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What are good "math habits" that have improved your mathematical practice?

I currently feel like I am not doing maths the best way I could; that is, I'm not making the most out of my time when I'm working on maths problems. The main thing I feel is that I'm not organizing my mind and my derivations as clear as I could,…
user56834
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Is arrow notation for vectors "not mathematically mature"?

Assuming that we can't bold our variables (say, we're writing math as opposed to typing it), is it "not mathematically mature" to put an arrow over a vector? I ask this because in my linear algebra class, my professor never used arrow notation, so…
hlin117
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Why is 'abuse of notation' tolerated?

I've personally tripped up on a few concepts that came down to an abuse of notation, and I've read of plenty more on stack exchange. It seems to all be forgiven with a wave of the hand. Why do we tolerate it at all? I understand if later on in…
Korgan Rivera
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Example of a very simple math statement in old literature which is (verbatim) a pain to understand

As you know, before symbolic notations were introduced and adopted by the mathematical community, even simple statements were written in a very complicated manner because the writer had (nearly) only words to describe an equation or a result. What…
Cauchy
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