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Ahhhh.... this is one of my biggest pet peeves. We're using the same words to mean wildly different things, and then arguing past each other about meaning. Ever
by dmunoz 13y ago
Ahhhh.... this is one of my biggest pet peeves. We're using the same words to mean wildly different things, and then arguing past each other about meaning. Every discussion thread I have seen on the matter has quickly brought up the relevant actual semantics, but people still want to argue.
It's a shame that ColinWright's post, linked by him below, got nuked by the moderators because it contains the most relevant information on the matter directly from an accredited mathematics professor, Terry Tao [0]. This is what should gratifies one's intellectual curiosity, not a series of posts that argue about the boring parts.
[0] http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin-formula-bernoulli-numbers-the-zeta-function-and-real-variable-analytic-continuation/ http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-euler-maclaurin...
- gus_massa 13y agoTwo additional details: * Terence Tao got the Fields Medal in 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao * ColinWright's post is now undead.
- twotwotwo 13y agoThe really interesting point, or at least what struck me when I first heard about this, is that there are alternative, useful, counterintuitive notions of ideas things that folks might think they have some intuitive grasp of. There's more to math (and not only the parts you _know_ you don't know about) than is dreamt of in one's philosophy.
- Iv 13y agoMath is mostly about exploring the consequences of alternative definitions for notions we take for granted. In this case, it is the equality notion that is used in a different fashion