4 ms·

I mention torque in the manifesto, but I wasn't specific enough in this case, and I've added an example addressing this issue at http://tauday.com/#sec:four_arg

by mhartl 16y ago

I mention torque in the manifesto, but I wasn't specific enough in this case, and I've added an example addressing this issue at http://tauday.com/#sec:four_arguments http://tauday.com/#sec:four_arguments. The short version is that when necessary you can easily add a subscript to avoid ambiguity, such as tau_R for rotational torque. (Superscripts work, too. Particle physicists deal with pions, which are represented by the letter pi, but all the symbols have superscripts indicating their electric charge. As a result, no one ever confuses them with the number.)

amalcon 16y ago
The thing is, torque is a particularly bad thing to conflict with. While you're not using torque every time you work with pi, you usually end up using pi every time you work with torque. edit: It's much like using i for both sqrt(-1) and for current. Electrical engineers need to use both of these all the time, so they often use j for sqrt(-1) instead.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Or you could use M for moment and stop using tau for torque. Most mechanical engineers talk about moments with M instead of tau.
  - amalcon 16y ago
    The electrical engineering thing demonstrates that you're unlikely to get a particular discipline to change its own notation. It would have made much more sense in retrospect to change current to something other than i, but that's not what happened.
    - nooneelse 16y ago
      As an electrical engineer (by way of physics and math), I'll use any other damn letter that makes sense for current that you want, and try to sway my fellows too. I just haven't seen a good option yet. What have you got? "c"... no good, speed of light for one; and also current needs good a good alteration for DC vs AC, "c" and "C" look too similar when written by someone else's hand (and "C" is crap in equations anyway since it can look too much like a "("). Current is a flow, but "f" is well used. Any good suggestions?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Agreed. He mentions overloading the pi symbol for the prime counting function but the difference is that you very rarely encounter pi in the prime counting function.
mhartl 16y ago
The parent comment is now obsolete; I came up with something even better: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1470379 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1470379

by mhartl 16y ago

amalcon 16y ago

The thing is, torque is a particularly bad thing to conflict with. While you're not using torque every time you work with pi, you usually end up using pi every time you work with torque. edit: It's much like using i for both sqrt(-1) and for current. Electrical engineers need to use both of these all the time, so they often use j for sqrt(-1) instead.

krschultz 16y ago
Or you could use M for moment and stop using tau for torque. Most mechanical engineers talk about moments with M instead of tau.
- amalcon 16y ago
  The electrical engineering thing demonstrates that you're unlikely to get a particular discipline to change its own notation. It would have made much more sense in retrospect to change current to something other than i, but that's not what happened.
  - nooneelse 16y ago
    As an electrical engineer (by way of physics and math), I'll use any other damn letter that makes sense for current that you want, and try to sway my fellows too. I just haven't seen a good option yet. What have you got? "c"... no good, speed of light for one; and also current needs good a good alteration for DC vs AC, "c" and "C" look too similar when written by someone else's hand (and "C" is crap in equations anyway since it can look too much like a "("). Current is a flow, but "f" is well used. Any good suggestions?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Locke1689 16y ago
Agreed. He mentions overloading the pi symbol for the prime counting function but the difference is that you very rarely encounter pi in the prime counting function.

mhartl 16y ago

The parent comment is now obsolete; I came up with something even better: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1470379 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1470379