Nov. 7, 2019
1:43 a.m.
Abe Dillon wrote:
Why not use a more consistent notation like add(x, y) instead of x + y when we know addition is a function and all other functions (usually) follow the f(x, y) notation? Because math is old.
No, it's because infix notation is *more readable* than function notation when formulas become complex. It has persisted because it works, not because mathematicians are stuck in their ways. Having said that, it's relatively rare that mathematicians make up entirely new symbols -- they're more likely to repurpose existing ones. E.g. "+" is used for addition-like operations on a very wide variety of things -- numbers, vectors, matrices, tensors, quantum states, etc. etc. Mathematics is quite Python-like in that way. -- Greg