On Wednesday, September 2, 2020 at 11:11:57 PM UTC-4 David A. Wheeler wrote:
> I think there has been a slow march from one-based indexing to zero based > indexing in computing. > > Many systems designed two decades ago supported one based indexing, such > as R and matlab/octave. But newer systems are pretty much uniformly > zero-based. > > I realize that abstract mathematics is not the same as computing, but they > do influence each other. > Every linear algebra textbook I've seen, even relatively recent ones, starts at 1 for matrices. I've asked for a counterexample, but no one has been able to provide one, suggesting that there is not a trend towards using 0-based matrices in the linear algebra literature. An important question is, who is Metamath intended for? What is its audience? I have no doubt that a professional mathematician can easily feel comfortable with either 0 or 1-based matrices. My concern is for someone who wants to use set.mm as a supplement to a book they are learning from. Apparently essentially 100% of linear algebra textbooks start at 1. For someone already struggling with new concepts, the disconnect between their book and set.mm's 0-based matrices is not going to be helpful. That's about all I want to say on this. I'll accept whatever the rest of the people here decide. Norm > > It seems that we can often hide the issue of whether or not matrices are > zero based or one based. Perhaps that would be the best course. > --- David A.Wheeler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metamath" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/metamath/3cace4e9-c725-4158-a42d-e88cec52b487n%40googlegroups.com.
