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When did people on this site start using the word "modulo" for something other than the modulo operator in mathematics?
by HyperTalk2 8y ago
When did people on this site start using the word "modulo" for something other than the modulo operator in mathematics?
- mikeklaas 8y agoI was used it in math undergrad 18 years ago, so it isn't an invention of hacker news
- joezydeco 8y agoIt’s been in the Jargon file for a few decades... http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/modulo.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/modulo.html
- mehrdadn 8y agoThe weird thing is I feel "minus" makes more sense. Isn't "modulo" remainder? Whereas you're talking about the part that's left out, rather than the part that is remaining?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoYou specify what's left over. Makes sense to me, though I can see how it would look backwards
- uluyol 8y agoCompletely agree on this point.
- firethief 8y agoIt's not just taking away 1 x though; modulo is "if x weren't a factor"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mehrdadn 8y agoOH, so you're saying in a % b = c it refers to b rather than to c? That would make sense... I always just read it as "remainder" in which case it would refer to c...
- posterboy 8y agoI don't think speech is mathematical, rather the opposite if anything. In a equivalent b modulo c the c is the modality, the property or condition we are interested in. The use in English is different to math's, because Natural languages are like mathematics modulo the rigidness. A category theorist would say isomorphic upto. Here're two quotes taken from wiktionary > Thus, the underlying structure which I would assign to Navajo will be identical, modulo word order, to the one that we found to be projected in all of the languages studied in chapter 3. 1990, Margaret Speas, Phrase Structure in Natural Language, p. 281 > Moreover, in the role of consumer, each individual (modulo his location) faces the same array of goods and services on sale to anyone who can pay the purchase price[.] 2002, Richard Arneson, "Egalitarianism", in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Mathematically, these expressions could be modeled in a vector space where "word order" or "location" are dimensions that are ignored. It's somewhat like saying: left and up are the same modulo rotation; [1 1 0] and [1 1 4] are the same modulo [x y lim(z->0)], if that makes any sense.
- mehrdadn 8y agoI had looked up "modulo" in a couple dictionaries and only seen the mathematical definition. I hadn't thought about it as being related to "modality", interesting.
- CUViper 8y agoSome discussion of that usage: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70018/meaning-of-modulo-the-fact https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70018/meaning-of...
- aportnoy 8y agoYou throw it in to sound smart. Has more to do with algebra/topology (think quotient group/space) than with arithmetic/number theory (n mod k).