On Sat, May 03, 2014 at 06:38:21PM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Particularly for mathematically-focused code, I think it would be useful to be able to use identifiers like (say) σ² for variance,
Having σ² be a variable name could be confusing. To a mathematician, it's not a distinct variable, it's just σ ** 2.
Actually, not really. A better way of putting it is that the standard deviation is "just" the square root of σ². Variance comes first (it's defined from first principles), and then the standard deviation is defined by taking the square root. But really, it doesn't matter which is derived from which. To a mathematician, x² is just as much a legitimate variable as x. One can say that f is a function of x² just as well as saying that it is a function of y, where y happens to equal x². But regardless of philisophical differences regarding the nature of what is or isn't a variable, versus something derived from a variable, it simply is useful to have a one-to-one correspondence between variables in Python code and notation used in mathematics. Is it useful enough to make up for the (minor) issues that others have already mentioned? I think so, but I will understand if others disagree. I think that the ability to distinguish between x² and x₂ can be important, and both x2 and x_2 are poor substitutes. (Of the two, I prefer x2.) But I'm also aware that this is very dependent on the problem domain. I wouldn't use x² and x₂ outside of a mathematical context. -- Steven