At Sun, 3 Aug 2008 20:03:03 -0700, michel paul wrote: > > In secondary math classes we often say "Math is a language", but we really > don't teach it that way. > > The closest we get to that is calling the comparison operators 'verbs' and > the various kinds of values that can be > combined into expressions 'nouns'.
I enjoyed reading your lines of thought, and Edward has a good observation. But I also have to point out that when people say "math is a language", it means that Math is a language to describe what it can describe well. But trying to make an analogy to English doesn't get you go too far. After all, why does it have to have anything to do with the English syntax? It is not a great language to express what you would like to do over weekend either. The "language-ness" is not in whether it has verbs and nouns, but the relationship between the target concept (Idea) and the description to mean it, and also something to "think in". And, the language-ness is not in these mathematical symbols and syntax, either. It would be possible to write equations in English-like syntax (like your "sum of 2 and 3" example). But the aspiration of preciseness compactness tends to favor a simpler and less ambiguious notation. So, it would be appropriate to say "math is a language for of physics" but saying "math is a language" doesn't sound like a complete sentence to me. "Is math a language of math?" would be an interesting question^^; Now, computer languages are like mathematics, but much more complex in many ways. It is built on top of some axioms, but the set of axioms tends to be very big. The notation is less ambiguous than typical mathematics one because one of the intended readers of the notation is the computer. -- Yoshiki _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
