5 ms·
The (original) purpose of mathematical notation is to facilitate (to some degree, automate) reasoning and calculations (mathematicians tend to conflate them) on
by Koshkin 5y ago
The (original) purpose of mathematical notation is to facilitate (to some degree, automate) reasoning and calculations (mathematicians tend to conflate them) on paper. For the existing frameworks it’s already as good (efficient) as it gets, given the 2-dimensional nature of said paper. Would adding new characters beyond the existing set (which is already quite large), introducing new alphabets in addition to the Latin and Greek (OK, we have the aleph), adding more font styles and sizes - would any of that constitute an improvement worthy of note? We have already exhausted the freedom given to us by the 2-dimensional paper-space as a computational medium - consider, for example, machinery that heavily relies on graphs (diagram chasing; Dynkin diagrams, etc.) or tables (matrices, tensors, character tables of groups, etc.).