[snip] > I think Barbie summed it up best: "Math is hard." > > Even most people who are good with computers find math hard. There are > many programmers who have trouble thinking in recursive/dynamic > programming terms, or who have trouble with the sort of simple 3D vector > math found in games. As such, searching for exponentials, or putting > them on the web, just doesn't come up that often. If it did, it would > be a bigger part of HTML/wiki/whatever. [snip]
The lack of a consistent mathematical representation for search engines recently has hampered my ability to find references to the fact that taking the arithmetic mean of ratios is a bad idea. In turn, someone trying to independently find references that support my theories of which of the infinite number of means is applicable in a given situation is going to run into the same problem. This is only one example of the aggravation I experience from the growing gap between computation and mathematics. The separation of computer science from mathematics is what prompted Norbert Weiner to remark that computation is about insight, not numbers. The ASCII-only entry into this e-mail limits how I can represent the following examples: It is unfortunate that the factorial function is used as an example of recursion because the integer stopping condition leads many (if not most) computer scientists to labor under the misconception that the argument must be an integer; e.g. some so-called scientific calculators issue an error message for 5.3! because the designers/programmers/engineers did not know that n! = Gamma(n+1), so 5.3! = Gamma(6.3). Many of these same scientific calculators issue error messages instead of calculating sqrt(-1)^sqrt(-1) - a real number, BTW. I suppose that there may be too few of us for whom a lack of MathML makes a difference to constitute a market to be worth ubiquitous implementation. How does www.backspaces.net handle mathematical representations? --Ross __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
