Comment by okaleniuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by okaleniuk | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I thought so too. When I started Geometry for Programmers, I was going to write all the formulas as SymPy snippets. I thought that was a brilliant idea because, yes, normally programmers are much more comfortable with code rather than with math notation, and math is not about notation anyway. Case in point, you can turn any SymPy expression into LaTeX with the `latex()` function. It doesn't make the expression any more mathematical, so the other way should apply just as well, right?

But the very first review shown that I was wrong. Very few people saw this as a good idea. Most wanted both formulas and code. Apparently, there is a certain "comfortable" level of math language in a math book readers do not wish to give up.

> math is not about notation anyway

Well, yes and no. It's true that notation is a tool and not the actual object of interest (except when it's both), but some tools are much, much better for certain tasks than others.

Imagine, for instance, trying to teach someone about databases and having them demand that you translate everything into x86 assembly first, since that's what they're comfortable with. Once you get past the basics, this is the level of mismatch we're talking about.

I agree on yes and no. If notation mattered little, there would not be that many different notations. Leibniz and Lagrange notations for derivatives, Einstein abbreviation for sums, Iverson notation for tensors that later became APL, or any language for any computer algebra system ever. If notation mattered little, inventing your own notation would matter little too.

But if notation mattered a lot then... there would not be that many different notations either. There would be one and only notation that works and no one would dare to divert from it.

Math notation is a cultural artifact with its own significance pretty much like SQL or x86 assembly language indeed.

"...and math is not about notation anyway". It most certainly is!

English is not defined by the Latin alphabet that it uses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com