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by octref 1428 days ago
If you enjoy this, you might find this meta list on "notation and thought" interesting: https://github.com/k-qy/notation
2 comments

I found this by Knuth on Iverson's notation interesting: https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/images/images/upload...
Very interesting. I did never really look at the "Concrete Mathematics" book, so I missed this take by Knuth on turning a formula F into a term [F] by defining it as 1 if F is true, and 0 if F is false. Note that this cannot be done in first-order logic, as a formula cannot be part of a term. But it is not a problem in simply-typed higher-order logic, for example, and it is not a problem in abstraction logic, either.
Thank you so much for this!!

The bit on "avoid ambiguity, or introduce useful ambiguity" is especially fascinating.