3 ms·
I knew Iverson introduced his bracket because I've always heard it called "the Iverson bracket"—and I absolutely love it—but I had no idea he invented the floor
by JadeNB 6y ago
I knew Iverson introduced his bracket because I've always heard it called "the Iverson bracket"—and I absolutely love it—but I had no idea he invented the floor and ceiling functions, too.
At the risk of flippancy, who would think that the creator of APL was also the source of such intuitive notations? Perhaps you have to be willing to explore crazy out-there notation to be able to find these occasional gems.
- johndcook 6y agoAgreed. Say he introduced 100 bits of notation, 3 good and 97 bad. The net result is that the world absorbed 3 good ideas, and the rest have vanished from memory. Not a bad track record. I hope to give the world three good ideas. Besides notation, APL introduced some ideas about vector computing that have been adopted in languages like R and Python (NumPy).