[globular-toast]

This is like trying to change English or arguing that we should all speak Esperanto. Mathematical notation isn't the way it is to save ink or make it look difficult. It's that way because it works. Notation isn't set by committee, it's just a way of communication that works. If you read cutting edge research you'll find notations being invented all over the place. Most of them will never go anywhere, some will become standard in their field (like big-O) and others will become universally used (like dropping the multiplication symbol and using epsilon for a small number).

[tenacious_tuna]

I think this is a very limited take for a hacker forum. We talk about how useful accurate names for variables are all the time, or generally how working to encode more natural/context-related semantics to code helps anyone reading it understand what the goal is better than an extremely terse symbology.

Yeah, lots of existing math texts will forever exist with greek alphabet soup, but we don't have to rely on those as our be-all-end-all teaching tools.

To operate at a high level in mathematics I would agree that having the skill of easily abstracting complex things into compact symbols is a necessary skill, just as I would agree to the same concept applied to software engineering or really any complex engineering system; by the same token, we don't have to START on hard mode with all of our students. Math is infamously difficult for some, largely (I think) because we make it unnecessarily opaque out of some misguided sense of traditionalism.

If we want to have lots of people who are good at math we should embrace whatever pedagogy is effective.

[ndriscoll]

Math doesn't start on hard mode. Students spend years studying how numbers behave before doing symbolic math. That said, trying to cover the topics symbolic math does with a more verbose language would just make it into impossible mode. It'd be like trying to replace sheet music with words.

In fact the analogy to music notation is I think a fairly strong one. People's complaints always sound to me like asking why we don't write "C3 sixteenth note" for music instead of using dots and lines. After all, how are we meant to know what the dots mean and remember the difference between an eighth and sixteenth, or what flats/sharps do? And then the key signature can modify all of it!

The notation just isn't a barrier. Once you learn to read it, it's there because it's a clearer way to write the ideas. The hard part for people is they don't understand the ideas, and don't have the frameworks like key signatures, chord progressions, and meter to place them within. Longer words for variables won't help people understand e.g. inner and outer regular measures, or the open cover definition of compactness. That comes from a lot of work to understand what you're trying to say, the pitfalls of saying it wrong, and precisely how your slightly different way of saying it avoids those pitfalls (or selects the best set of pitfalls if you must pick some kind of degenerate behavior).

[tenacious_tuna]

I hadn't thought of sheet music in this context before; that's a helpful counter-example, thanks.

Broadly I agree; the semantic density of domain-specific language is often required to operate well in that domain. I disagree some with the "Math doesn't start on hard mode," but I think that's just bikeshedding at some level.

The endemic "I just don't understand math" that my (American) peers have espoused, to me, points to a failure in our (American, public school) instruction practices around it.

[globular-toast]

Many programs are at a much higher level of abstraction than mathematics. If you are implementing domain logic then you should definitely use names from the domain. But when implementing an algorithm often the most meaningful name is a single character. I find it odd when people try to force the "no single character" rule everywhere.

But I've got to say, the short names are not the problem. If you rewrote F=ma as "force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration" this wouldn't suddenly make it more accessible to swathes of the population. People who are good at maths anyway have no problem with this.

[nh23423fefe]

imagining that alpha is what stops people from being good at math is a useless take. why pretend that such a low bar could prevent anyone from understanding? its some fake generosity towards "newcomers" that is completely unwarranted. math notation is by and for professional mathematicians.

are you really saying that "let function(argument has type RealNumber) has type RealNumber be a function from a real number argument to a real number" is somehow superior to "let f(x) : R->R"

[tenacious_tuna]

> why pretend that such a low bar could prevent anyone from understanding?

I don't know why this is a startling take. If you encode your ideas in an unfamilar symbology, of course that's going to make it more difficult for someone who isn't familiar with the space.

I'm not arguing that we should teach real analysis this way, or any other high level math class. I'm only contesting GP's comment that there is NO value to be had in using more familiar language to explain a new concept to an unfamiliar audience.

This is the entire reasoning behind "word problems" at the elementary level; they're meant to ground the abstract modeling of a math problem (193 - 3 * 12 = ?) into something more intuitive for a child to understand (If you start with 193 eggs, and you take three dozen away to bake a cake, how many are left?)

> are you really saying that "let function(argument has type RealNumber) has type RealNumber be a function from a real number argument to a real number" is somehow superior to "let f(x) : R->R"

No, I'm saying the there's tradeoffs on either side, and our educators ought to be aware of this.

> math notation is by and for professional mathematicians.

I agree, but we teach math to plenty of people who aren't professional mathematicians. I wouldn't want to do formal abstract algebra proofs in a more verbose form, I'm perfectly happy using the domain notation, but my friends from biological sciences who have to take a calculus course now have to learn both a new symbology alongside the problem domain. I've watched enough of my (clearly intelligent) biology friends slam face first into calculus and spin out. They're not dumb, they can do circles around me when it comes to chemistry, yet they Just Can't wrap their heads around calculus-style math, which leads me to wonder what the difference is between how we teach complex chemistry vs complex math. Questioning the pedagogy is a fairly logical extension of that.

[globular-toast]

If there was some better notation that allowed biology people to understand calculus more easily, what do you imagine they'd do with it?

It's hard for me to imagine it without any special notation. It makes me think of the general relativity in words of four characters or less that was posted recently. Sure, it might be possible, but does it really make it easier to understand? Understanding is normally built up in layers. We learn things using big words because that makes it easier than learning with small words. And we learn maths with funny symbols because it makes it easier than learning it with words (or colours or mime or other things you already know).