3 ms·
Besides the usual jargon, what I find interesting is that the tradition of always naming things after their discoverers: Fourier, Falconer, Furstenberg, Kakeya.
by GuB-42 3mo ago
Besides the usual jargon, what I find interesting is that the tradition of always naming things after their discoverers: Fourier, Falconer, Furstenberg, Kakeya. 4 names in one sentence.
Other fields do it, but it is almost systematic in math, and arguably, it makes things even harder to understand as people names are not descriptive.
- CogDisco 3mo agoBut then there's the opposite in maths where there's an overload on "plain" terminology. "Normal" means a billion different things. Same as "regular" or "simple". Omitting the human history of a field does not automatically make it easier.
- nine_k 3mo agoThere are no way to name most problems both compactly and descriptively. The inability to attach an acceptably descriptive moniker to a problem leads to calling the problems (and solutions, theorems, etc) after the author.