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I thought this was going to be about how to read Mathematics aloud, e.g. to describe it over the telephone. It seems that even something as common as $f : a \ri
by bluenose69 10y ago
I thought this was going to be about how to read Mathematics aloud, e.g. to describe it over the telephone. It seems that even something as common as $f : a \rightarrow b$ might be spoken aloud in different ways.
- jordigh 10y agoThis is in fact somewhat of a real problem. Mathematics is kind of meant to be learned while interacting other humans, not in pure cold isolation. A lot of what you absorb with other humans is how to pronounce things. A simple example for example is learning to pronounce binomial coefficients as "5 choose 2" or knowing that ŷ is pronounced "y hat". Something kind of similar happens in hackerdom, where you may learn to pronounce "/etc" as "slash etsy" or "!" as "bang".
- urathai 9y agoI totally agree with you! Learning the language of mathematics, specifically spoken in this case, is an important part in learning mathematics. I think it is really important to discuss proofs and ideas with your friends because of this. Another problem is that most of the literature and the lectures are in English but you often discuss in another language. So you have to both do the translation from written to spoken mathematics and the translation from English to, in my case, Swedish. This easily leads to half translated English words but I try to avoid that as much as possible.