3 ms·
Well mathematics notation largely follows speech. People say “one plus two” — largely because speech doesn’t have closing parentheses, so we need to speak in a
by bobbylarrybobby 8y ago
Well mathematics notation largely follows speech. People say “one plus two” — largely because speech doesn’t have closing parentheses, so we need to speak in a way that makes it clear when we’re done talking — so that’s how we write it. But for a computer, prefix notation is great because it’s unambiguous and clear even without knowledge of PEMDAS. Similar to how Americans write MM/DD/YYYY because that’s how we say dates, but we can still acknowledge that YYYY-MM-DD is the best format for computers.
- improbable22 8y agoI wonder how much is the reverse: we now tend to say mathematical expressions as they are written, but before this was standardised, you would just explain the steps. Probably not "one plus two" -- I think + is essentially a variant of & which is a ligature for "et", and I guess most languages put "and" between the things being combined. But I'd be surprised if (x/y)^2 was said "x over y all squared" by many people before this notation. But the notation is clearly more designed for thinking on paper than for explaining down a phone line.