3 ms·

I'm not sure you need a new unary "/" operation. Just use "1/" as a unary operation and you get the same results. Trying to do "/" as a new unary operation will

by Retra 11y ago

I'm not sure you need a new unary "/" operation. Just use "1/" as a unary operation and you get the same results. Trying to do "/" as a new unary operation will probably just lead to confusion. For instance, when I read an equation like this: Information = /uncertainty "Information = 1/uncertainty" is just plain clearer.

jacobolus 11y ago
The point of the unary / is not the programming language syntax per se. If you want, in essentially every programming context where `-x` is meaningful, you can write `0-x` instead. It’s arguably less confusing. The point he’s trying to emphasize is that in his proposed number system, every exactly represented number has an exact multiplicative inverse, which can be computed by flipping bits, analogous to computing the additive inverse with a floating point number or signed integer.
- Retra 11y ago
  I'm not talking about programming syntax, I'm talking about communication. It doesn't matter that `-x` and `0-x` are equivalent; `-x` is a well-known convention and `/x` is not. (When I read '/x' my brain immediately jumps to trying to interpret that as a malformed expression or a directory or something.) And you don't need to make a point that every number has a multiplicative inverse. That's already established by simply pointing out that these are the projective reals and that 1/0 = ±∞. All non-zero reals already had multiplicative inverses just as they had additive inverses.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    Maybe he should have used a ÷ symbol instead? Edit: he clearly wanted to emphasize that this is a unary operator. Using 1/x as the symbol instead of /x or ÷x would weaken the desired association.
    - Retra 11y ago
      The '1/' symbol is already established to indicate a multiplicative inverse. There's no need for a new symbol nor the repurposing of an old one.

3 ms·

I'm not sure you need a new unary "/" operation. Just use "1/" as a unary operation and you get the same results. Trying to do "/" as a new unary operation will

by Retra 11y ago

jacobolus 11y ago
The point of the unary / is not the programming language syntax per se. If you want, in essentially every programming context where `-x` is meaningful, you can write `0-x` instead. It’s arguably less confusing. The point he’s trying to emphasize is that in his proposed number system, every exactly represented number has an exact multiplicative inverse, which can be computed by flipping bits, analogous to computing the additive inverse with a floating point number or signed integer.
- Retra 11y ago
  I'm not talking about programming syntax, I'm talking about communication. It doesn't matter that `-x` and `0-x` are equivalent; `-x` is a well-known convention and `/x` is not. (When I read '/x' my brain immediately jumps to trying to interpret that as a malformed expression or a directory or something.) And you don't need to make a point that every number has a multiplicative inverse. That's already established by simply pointing out that these are the projective reals and that 1/0 = ±∞. All non-zero reals already had multiplicative inverses just as they had additive inverses.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    Maybe he should have used a ÷ symbol instead? Edit: he clearly wanted to emphasize that this is a unary operator. Using 1/x as the symbol instead of /x or ÷x would weaken the desired association.
    - Retra 11y ago
      The '1/' symbol is already established to indicate a multiplicative inverse. There's no need for a new symbol nor the repurposing of an old one.