> Behalf Of David Vincent-Jones > > There are cleaver ways to avoid the problem .. but remember that x and y > are > probably the most common of all mathematical variable names that are now > being boxed into a special significance. > > The names x., y. et all were special and looked special; fine but > eliminating any part of the a through Z series as regular nouns I believe > to > be unfortunate. > > David >
The message below holds similar observations, but it is all academic now (if it ever was otherwise). > On Behalf Of Cliff Reiter > Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 7:26 AM > To: General forum > Subject: Re: [Jgeneral] explicit arguments > > I really wish this thread would go away, but... > > >>>The arguments to an explicit definition are denoted by > >>>x. y. m. n. u. v. ; they could be denoted by x y m n u v > >>>instead. > > I can't imagine I would favor using one letter uninflected names > for arguemnts. I would be embarrsed if I had to tell my students > here is a list of one letter names you can't use as temporary > variables without danger of confusion. > > Roger Hui wrote: > > I think you got it wrong. > > > > It is much more likely that "our maths book" contains > > x and y than for it to contain x. and y., and x and y can > > be put directly into the new regime explicit definition. > > > ... > > Actually, teaching math at the college level, I see x and y > as independent variables pretty much only only in Calculus III > as in z=f(x,y) as a function in common math notation. > > Most lower levels deal with single varaible functions and use > y as the dependent variable, as in y=f(x), so to be more > comfortable with HS or introductory college level math, > all our function names should be "y" (tongue firmly in check). > By the time students are more sophisticated than calulus III, they > see vector notation for independent variables, as in > $\vec y = \vec f (\vec x)$. > > One of the strengths of J and APL is the dazzling grace that comes > from mixing monads and dyads. There is some conflict with > common math notation with this. However, I would see changing > x. y. m. n. u. v. to x y m n u v > as making it more difficult to distinguish temporary variables > from reserved argument names and I think using the inflections > makes it easy to expect special meaning for the symbols. > > Best, > Cliff > > -- > Clifford A. Reiter > Mathematics Department, Lafayette College > Easton, PA 18042 USA, 610-330-5277 > http://www.lafayette.edu/~reiterc > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
