6 ms·

I wish math notation becomes substitued with pseudocode. I can never figure out all the greek letters!

lucb1e 9y ago
But then it wouldn't look as "scientific" (i.e. anyone could understand it, it wouldn't look complicated). At least that's what I feel like, reading and writing a bunch of papers for my master's. We are encouraged to put math stuff in ours just because it looks more theoretical that way. Whenever I do something of worth I also make sure to blog about it so I can write down in normal terms what we did and found, with code, (online) demo, and anything else that might be useful.
- Safyia 9y ago
  It would be great to have a website where the writers of the paper, or well, anyone who understood it well, would write an article about it in a more accessible way with some examples included etc. I am a big fan of blogs explaining such things.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    That's an interesting idea! Might be something indeed.
  - AnsemWise 9y ago
    Checkout https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/
- andars 9y ago
  Would you mind sharing your field of study?
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    Security, software and network engineering. (Previous study was software and security, this one is security and network; and I've always liked to play with tech in those three subfields.)
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  I got the same feeling while I was still in university. I mean if the mathematical notation would at least make it more concise, because there are definitely computations which are easier explained using this notation. But more often than not I look at papers, where I know what they were doing and how and just have to ask myself: Why would you go through the work of translating what you did back into formulas, which bring exactly zero benefit and are harder to understand than the code you wrote?!
  - jmkirby 9y ago
    I'm old enough to have never been tested for dyslexia, because I scored high in average tests.. But come high school years, or in British sixth form studying for"A levels", I scored in the top decile for my class and for Applied Math, but the bottom dectile for Pure Math. I think you can make a very good argument that math notation is not doing the potentially career changing job it could be doing, by not expanding the keys. Darn, even a key table index alongside would be night and day better. Edit - didn't remember the length of my comment after coming back to it after a break, so culled the excess. The punchline was that when we got a new young and enthusiastic Pure tutor, who was French, so he in true anger would explain to us in great eloquent depth, my marks equalized in two semesters. There's surely something like a formal study of students to show if comprehension is the main reason math is hard?
    - hyeonwho3 9y ago
      At the level of arithmetic, there are studies of children performing math in the marketplace, but then being unable to do the same calculation on paper. So translation from notation to reality (and back) is probably a significant barrier to success in math.
- chestervonwinch 9y ago
  1) Sometimes it's actually helpful to use greek letters when a convention is used. For example: capitals for matrices (A), lowercase for column vectors (a), and Greek for scalars (α). 2) I agree with the gist of your point, but I'm guessing you're being down-voted because you come off as sort of flippant. Anyhow, I've long thought that mathematics should have hover-text to help remove the mental overhead of translating the concise notation to meaningful interpretation. Obviously, using variables names like `velocity_of_thing` is much too verbose in mathematics (papers would 1000's of pages); however, β with hover-text "This is the velocity vector of the thing." would be super helpful IMO.
  - dvirsky 9y ago
    Is there a standard notation that can produce both? I don't know much LaTex but I don't think it holds sufficient information. Does MathML maybe?
    - jahewson 9y ago
      The MathML standard is split into two parts, Presentation MathML, which is widely used and contains roughly the same information as TeX, and Semantic MathML which is used by a handful of computer algebra systems. The latter does what you want. Both formats have their origins in Wolfram Mathematica.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    Just the other day I spent a solid 30 minutes trying to distinguish between I and Iⱼ in an equation of motion. Turns out that the former was the identity matrix and the later was the inertial matrix of body j. If there's a way to add that sort of hover annotation in LaTeX, I'd gladly use that for my thesis.
    - slavik81 9y ago
      It seems there is a method to add tooltips, though it looks a little rough. Worth a shot, I suppose. https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/155518/77180 https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/155518/77180
- grawprog 9y ago
  Ya science has this way with needing to look and seem self important. Or at least the scientists reviewing journals.
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  > We are encouraged to put math stuff in ours just because it looks more theoretical that way. If that's really true, you are getting bad advice.
Robotbeat 9y ago
I often feel the opposite. Pseudocode makes me lost. Ideally, you'd have both. The clean math notation AND pseudocode.
jonbarker 9y ago
Or at least spell them out like lambda
kbenson 9y ago
Then we would just have a bunch of mathematicians wondering what some of the function names meant, since English isn't always definitive of obvious in definition (not to mention the non-English speakers who have to learn a combination of symbols instead of one). All you're really doing is substituting something you're unfamiliar (or less familiar) with, common mathematics symbols, with something you specifically happen to be more familiar with (programming pseudocode). It's really no different than someone looking at your pseudocode and saying "why can't they just write it in plain English?"
- my_ghola 9y ago
  Then maybe something that can translate math notation to pseudocode and back?

But then it wouldn't look as "scientific" (i.e. anyone could understand it, it wouldn't look complicated). At least that's what I feel like, reading and writing a bunch of papers for my master's. We are encouraged to put math stuff in ours just because it looks more theoretical that way. Whenever I do something of worth I also make sure to blog about it so I can write down in normal terms what we did and found, with code, (online) demo, and anything else that might be useful.

Safyia 9y ago
It would be great to have a website where the writers of the paper, or well, anyone who understood it well, would write an article about it in a more accessible way with some examples included etc. I am a big fan of blogs explaining such things.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  That's an interesting idea! Might be something indeed.
- AnsemWise 9y ago
  Checkout https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/
andars 9y ago
Would you mind sharing your field of study?
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Security, software and network engineering. (Previous study was software and security, this one is security and network; and I've always liked to play with tech in those three subfields.)
Joe-Z 9y ago
I got the same feeling while I was still in university. I mean if the mathematical notation would at least make it more concise, because there are definitely computations which are easier explained using this notation. But more often than not I look at papers, where I know what they were doing and how and just have to ask myself: Why would you go through the work of translating what you did back into formulas, which bring exactly zero benefit and are harder to understand than the code you wrote?!
- jmkirby 9y ago
  I'm old enough to have never been tested for dyslexia, because I scored high in average tests.. But come high school years, or in British sixth form studying for"A levels", I scored in the top decile for my class and for Applied Math, but the bottom dectile for Pure Math. I think you can make a very good argument that math notation is not doing the potentially career changing job it could be doing, by not expanding the keys. Darn, even a key table index alongside would be night and day better. Edit - didn't remember the length of my comment after coming back to it after a break, so culled the excess. The punchline was that when we got a new young and enthusiastic Pure tutor, who was French, so he in true anger would explain to us in great eloquent depth, my marks equalized in two semesters. There's surely something like a formal study of students to show if comprehension is the main reason math is hard?
  - hyeonwho3 9y ago
    At the level of arithmetic, there are studies of children performing math in the marketplace, but then being unable to do the same calculation on paper. So translation from notation to reality (and back) is probably a significant barrier to success in math.
chestervonwinch 9y ago
1) Sometimes it's actually helpful to use greek letters when a convention is used. For example: capitals for matrices (A), lowercase for column vectors (a), and Greek for scalars (α). 2) I agree with the gist of your point, but I'm guessing you're being down-voted because you come off as sort of flippant. Anyhow, I've long thought that mathematics should have hover-text to help remove the mental overhead of translating the concise notation to meaningful interpretation. Obviously, using variables names like `velocity_of_thing` is much too verbose in mathematics (papers would 1000's of pages); however, β with hover-text "This is the velocity vector of the thing." would be super helpful IMO.
- dvirsky 9y ago
  Is there a standard notation that can produce both? I don't know much LaTex but I don't think it holds sufficient information. Does MathML maybe?
  - jahewson 9y ago
    The MathML standard is split into two parts, Presentation MathML, which is widely used and contains roughly the same information as TeX, and Semantic MathML which is used by a handful of computer algebra systems. The latter does what you want. Both formats have their origins in Wolfram Mathematica.
- slavik81 9y ago
  Just the other day I spent a solid 30 minutes trying to distinguish between I and Iⱼ in an equation of motion. Turns out that the former was the identity matrix and the later was the inertial matrix of body j. If there's a way to add that sort of hover annotation in LaTeX, I'd gladly use that for my thesis.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    It seems there is a method to add tooltips, though it looks a little rough. Worth a shot, I suppose. https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/155518/77180 https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/155518/77180
grawprog 9y ago
Ya science has this way with needing to look and seem self important. Or at least the scientists reviewing journals.
robotresearcher 9y ago
> We are encouraged to put math stuff in ours just because it looks more theoretical that way. If that's really true, you are getting bad advice.

Robotbeat 9y ago

I often feel the opposite. Pseudocode makes me lost. Ideally, you'd have both. The clean math notation AND pseudocode.

jonbarker 9y ago

Or at least spell them out like lambda

kbenson 9y ago

Then we would just have a bunch of mathematicians wondering what some of the function names meant, since English isn't always definitive of obvious in definition (not to mention the non-English speakers who have to learn a combination of symbols instead of one). All you're really doing is substituting something you're unfamiliar (or less familiar) with, common mathematics symbols, with something you specifically happen to be more familiar with (programming pseudocode). It's really no different than someone looking at your pseudocode and saying "why can't they just write it in plain English?"

my_ghola 9y ago
Then maybe something that can translate math notation to pseudocode and back?