5 ms·
I don't get the issue. It's just notation. You could "feel" the same way about the integral sign or fractions or about underused letters in your own alphabet.
by filmor 6y ago
I don't get the issue. It's just notation. You could "feel" the same way about the integral sign or fractions or about underused letters in your own alphabet.
When the greek letters are used, they usually give you a clear indication that they are "something different" from the things written. It's much either to understand that alpha, beta, gamma, delta are some counterpart to a, b, c, d than if you had to use i, j, k, l (for example).
Lowercase Xi is indeed always written horribly (like a tornado), but at least in my studies, everyone wrote it equally horribly and all in the same way.
- kmill 6y agoFor my first encounter with lowercase xi, I was sure the professor was taking advantage of his tenure and trying to pass off a scribble as a variable, and that was with my having made a point to familiarize myself with the Greek alphabet the previous semester. Somehow I don't remember him bothering to pronounce it! Then there are the German algebraists who developed ring theory, for whom Greek letters were not sufficient -- they reached for their Fraktur. The correspondences for certain letters -- like A and S -- can be inscrutable to neophytes. While I get why notation shouldn't matter, I do find it to be more tiring to read new notation where I don't already have an internal pronunciation.
- tragomaskhalos 6y agoDrawing bottom up: "'S' (with a slightly flattened bottom), then a 'c', then a little hook"; sometimes find myself even muttering 's,c,hook' as I write one even today.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoJust notation? I don't see that it's a trivial matter, any more than good writing is trivial. I'm reminded of a recent HackerNews thread on Why is Maxwell's theory so hard to understand? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22812969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22812969