Hacker News Reader

tobbe2064

The word function has a sort of precis mening in math as a rule mapping each NUMBER in some domain to some NUMBER in a codomaon. The word arrow however can refer to any directed relation including less than or divides or what not, as long as they are composable and associative

View on HN

That's not even true. Functions can map between lots of things, not necessarily numbers.

Further math is sort of a stone age technology

Bronze age, sure, but stone age might be pushing it.

wtf are you on about? That is not how math works.

I apologise for my drunken and incorrect silliness.

Aside from that, would you please enlighten as to what you meant by "that's not how math works"?

Sorry for my harsh comment; here's what I'm thinking of...

In math, you are dealing with many different kinds of object, not just numbers. In fact, one of the big realizations that led to modern mathematics is that not all mathematical objects can even be coded as numbers!

Your remark about "arrow" being more general than function is correct; but functions do not map only between sets of numbers, but between arbitrary sets, some of which contain elements that are not numbers, or even encodable as such.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com