Don,
So far the all the evidence and advice brought up in this thread suggests that:
* explicit reference to arguments in equations is likely to be less
confusing to math students (or beginning J users) than tacit or
implicit references.
* the use of a little additional syntax to define verbs presents
little or no barrier to students unfamiliar with J and/or
programming.
I wonder at this point whether you would be receptive to going back to an
earlier suggestion in post by Oleg proposing a "verb definition mode"?
The implementation details are specified on the wiki page:
<http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Phrases/Definitions>
If the adverb "defn" on that page were renamed "Let" you could use it in a
session like this:
==============
NB. blah blah intro
NB. For:
y=: 3 4 9 4 3 8 5
NB. The mean is
(+/y) % #y
4.6
NB. ... when want to define verbs:
''Let
mean=: (+/y) % #y
ssdev=: +/ *: y - mean y
var=: (ssdev y) % <:#y
stddev=: %: var y
)
mean y
4.6
ssdev y
29.2
var y
7.3
stddev y
2.70185
==================
If you wanted to get really picky you could define a noun
Now=: 'whatever you like cause it just gets ignored'
So that you could write:
Now Let
coeffvar=: (stddev y) % mean y
)
That's getting pretty close to the treatment of equations in a text book?
Note you are free to make the definition for stddev one big line if you like, I
just think that dividing it up into meaningful bits as above is more
illuminating (not to mention flexible).
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