4 ms·
I actually agree with the author's premise, I think she makes a good case that some of these concepts would be both more approachable, and more memorable, with
by superhuzza 6y ago
I actually agree with the author's premise, I think she makes a good case that some of these concepts would be both more approachable, and more memorable, with simpler names.
However, coming up with simple names is incredibly difficult. It's easy to write a 10,000 word on a complicated topic, but incredibly difficult to squish it into a few letters.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoYes, agreed with the second part. >"Why do mathematicians continue to proffer and accept this courtesy, when it increases their own mental load and makes their own work more opaque?" (the OP) // I imagine because it doesn't increase their mental load? It might even reduce it; abstraction is a principle component of the field after all. Using descriptive names sounds like it requires a half-arsed disabstraction, a series of munged verbose partial truths? Naming for authors is partially self-documenting too, though practically that's probably not often useful.
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoAnd bad naming might even make things worse as the reader might get the wrong idea.
- dorchadas 6y agoOr you end up with things like 'clopen' sets, which are both closed and open!
- abnry 6y agoThis is exactly how I feel. What I do think you can criticize, however, is the lack of imagination mathematicians have in naming theorems. If only there were more Ham Sandwich Theorems [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem
- d2v 6y ago> The two-dimensional variant of the theorem (also known as the pancake theorem) can be proved by an argument which appears in the fair cake-cutting literature This is the first time that reading about math has made me hungry.