More computers understand only what they're told. You -have- to be exact. Humans can infer. If it doesn't make sense, they realize something is wrong and attem

More computers understand only what they're told. You -have- to be exact. Humans can infer. If it doesn't make sense, they realize something is wrong and attempt to make sense of it. As to why the mathematician preferred 'English', I think it's because quantifiers aren't universal. Mathematical notation itself isn't universal. That is, while the student may be internally consistent and exact in their qualifiers, they are not universally consistent between students, nor with the professor's expectation. The professor wanted to immediately grok what the student was trying to do, not have to approach every single turned in assignment as though it was an unfamiliar mathematical paper, using its own notation, that he had to interpret (where some symbols may share a standard meaning across papers, others won't)