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I do believe mathematicians have co-opted a great many dictionary words to describe obscure and unique properties of numbers, so they may converse at parties an
by HocusLocus 7y ago
I do believe mathematicians have co-opted a great many dictionary words to describe obscure and unique properties of numbers, so they may converse at parties and from a distance it sounds like a normal conversation.
- lidHanteyk 7y agoIt's because number theory is ancient. The concept of primality is millennia old. The words used to describe numbers are thus built up over a very long time, and often were meant to evoke imagery, concepts, or even personalities. If you examine younger branches of mathematics with fewer numbers, like topology or category theory, you will find more systematically-named rules and more systems named for people. The list of separation axioms [0] is the best-known example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_axiom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_axiom
- XaspR8d 7y agoYes, but if you talk continuously about these sorts of things, it's impossible to be discrete.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoThe anthropomorphization of numbers is strange. It seems awfully subjective to describe numbers meeting certain qualities as "weird".
- ncmncm 7y agoWait until you find out what "awfully", "subjective", "certain", and "qualities" mean to mathematicians.
- Someone 7y agoAlso inconsisten. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird says: ”Definition of weird (Entry 1 of 2) 1 : of strange or extraordinary character : ODD, FANTASTIC” But FTA: ”It is not known if any odd weird numbers exist”
- scubbo 7y agoI think the only mathematics joke that I've come up with myself is "Almost-all numbers are normal" - a self-evidently true statement, which nevertheless means something wildly different than what a layman might believe - indeed, the numbers that a non-mathematician might be most likely to imagine or name are in fact not normal!