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In college I had a physics professor who sometimes replace single-letter variables like X with pictograms like a football. It was a nice reminder that the symbo
by forrestthewoods 5y ago
In college I had a physics professor who sometimes replace single-letter variables like X with pictograms like a football. It was a nice reminder that the symbol is completely arbitrary and meaningless.
Therefore I semi-jokingly propose math papers use emoji for their symbols.
I more seriously propose, every math paper should include a god damn table of symbol definitions. I never got “good at math” because not only is the symbology dense, it’s incredibly hard to find definitions. I’m pretty good at teaching myself new things from books and papers. But I just can’t grok math. Math on Wikipedia is a nightmare. It makes me sad because it’s unnecessary. It doesn’t actually have to be so hard.
- tragomaskhalos 5y agoMy son is rather algebra-phobic, so to explain concepts requiring variables I usually use a coloured dot or (if no coloured pens are are to hand) a little picture. People who grok maths tend to be blind to the confusion that variables can engender, viz if I say "2x = 6" then "x" is to be understood as representing a specific value, which is in contrast to e.g. an area formula like "A = bh", so breaking away from letters altogether is sometimes helpful.