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I sympathize with this view; I did some simple programming in C-like languages before I learned algebra, and it's sometimes hard to not see = this way. But if
by tomjakubowski 9y ago
I sympathize with this view; I did some simple programming in C-like languages before I learned algebra, and it's sometimes hard to not see = this way.
But if = in math notation denoted "assignment", what could ≠ mean?
- ben509 9y agoMaybe lhs = rhs is the set of assignments implied by a postcondition. So x = 5 implies a single assignment, but x = ±5 could mean two possible assignments. Similarly, x ≠ 5 would mean all the possible assignments but x = 5.
- smadge 9y agoEquality is symmetric. If lhs = rhs then rhs = lhs. x ≠ 5 means exactly that, x is anything that is not 5. So if you are talking about the natural numbers, x could be any element of the set {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, ...}. If x = ±5 then x could be any element of the set {-5, 5}.