Well, the emoji post is from a blog of a math grad student trying to make sense of her existence as a math grad student and trying to explain concepts simply. I recommend noodling around her "other" posts...Baez recommended her blog.
On Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 17:57 Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: > Well, Ok. I can see that it's sort of like Carl Tollander's > > "Let there be a spherical cow," which always makes me smile. > > Or > > Even the micro economists', > > "Let there be a fully informed consumer." > > But how do we tell the jokes from the foundational insights: > > Like: "Let there be a number which when multiplied by itself equals -1. > > Or that howler of mathematical howlers: "Think of a number greater than any > number you can think of." > > Or Knewton's Knee-slapper: "Calculate the acceleration at an instant." > > Bridges built and airplanes flown on gales of laughter. > > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of > lrudo...@meganet.net > Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 3:10 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FW: Math emojis > > The joke (such as it is) is a discourse joke, playing upon the fact > (incontestable to all fluent writers/speakers of MathEng, i.e., > mathematicians' English) that the fragment of MathEng "For every \epsilon < > 0" is perfectly well formed both syntactically and semantically, but > violates the established pragmatics of MathEng. (Excuse the TeX, but when I > try to paste the Greek letter epsilon into this window, hijinx ensue; > imagine it's there, instead of \epsilon.) [Added before mailing: it occurs > to me that you, as an expert on "pragmatism", may not be familiar with the > linguists' term-of-art "pragmatics", which I learned long ago from my > daughter Susanna, whom you met in Santa Fe. The first definition Google > gives is what I mean: "the branch of linguistics dealing with language in > use and the contexts in which it is used, including such matters as deixis, > the taking of turns in conversation, text organization, presupposition, and > implicature." In particular, the "joke" in question depends on > presuppositions and implicatures.] > > Even as a hopeless non-fluent occasional witness of MathEng, Nick, you can > easily acquire evidence in favor of my claim about syntax by browsing > mathematical papers for fragments of the form "For every [glyph] < [glyph]" > until you are convinced of the proposition that the MathEng discourse > community accepts such a fragment as well-formed. > > With perhaps more work than you can be expected to do, you might also > acquire evidence in favor of my claim about semantics by browsing for > contexts that convince you of several propositions about MathEng: (1) very > generally, the glyph (here expanded as) \epsilon is used in MathEng to > denote a "real number"; (2) the glyph 0, in both MathEng and colloquial > English, is used to denote the (real) number zero; (3) the glyph < is used > in MathEng to denote a relationship that two real numbers may or may not > bear to each other, namely, the string of glyphs p < q is used to denote > that p is less than (and not equal to) q; (4) there *are* real numbers less > than 0; ... and perhaps more; whence "For every \epsilon < 0" is a > meaningful fragment of MathEng. > > *However*, without sufficient exposure to MathEng discourses (and certainly > exposure more than you have had, or would tolerate having in the present or > future) it would be unlikely that you could figure out on your own that IN > PRESENT PRACTICE within the MathEng discourse community all the following > propositions are true. (A) The glyph \epsilon is nearly always used to > denote a "small" real number (or an "arbitrary" real number that "becomes" > small), where in the context of "the real number system" > (among others) "small" means "close to 0". (B) More specifically, in many > (but not all) such contexts, "small" means "close to 0 BUT LARGER THAN 0". > (C) The most common context of type (B)--at least for mathematics students > and most, but probably not all, more fully-fledged Working > Mathematicians)--are the MathEng discourse fragments "For every \epsilon > > 0", "For every sufficiently small \epsilon > 0", and their variants with > "every" replaced by "all". [This is an empirical claim. I have not done > anything to test it (although if you have read those Book Fragments I sent > you, you will see there several examples where I *have* accumulated strong > empirical evidence, from exhaustive queries of extensive corpora of > MathEng, > for other claims about MathEng: which should convince you, I hope, that my > MathEng intuitions are not invariably pulled out of my ass). > I will bet you a shiny new dime that it's true.] THEREFORE, in the > actually > existing community of contemporary fluent users of MathEng, the > syntactically and semantically impeccable fragment "For every \epsilon < 0" > is pragmatically defective: nobody would say that! > > If that hasn't explained any slightest \epsilon of humor out of the joke, I > don't know why not. Perhaps you could respond with a Peircean analysis of > the semiotics of the joke, and *really* kill it dead. > > Lee > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
