On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Boyko Bantchev <boyk...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 8 December 2012 15:07, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote: >> To my knowledge, no studies have been done to investigate this issue. > > People interested in conducting such a study are those willing to > demonstrate that J would be easier, compared to traditional notation, > for school students to read and think in. Holders of the opposite > opinion do not need to prove anything, as that opinion prevails.
That sounds like the approach of an orthodoxy rather than of a scientific research community. >> And, if we constrain our use of J to only those operations which >> have equivalents in traditional algebraic notation ... > > ... then you will be doing a pointless thing. It seems to me that you are saying that avoiding irrelevancies is pointless. For example, I believe you have declared that leaving out the circle functions is pointless, in a class that is not yet ready for trigonometry. If that is a valid representation of your point of view, then I must agree that your conclusions are consistent. I would not want to use J with this "non-pointless" approach, either. >> But both of these pale to insignificance when compared to the >> number of issues of this sort represented by the english language. >> So I feel this enumeration of partial contexts is a red herring. > > What *is* red herring is trying to foist issues of natural languages > when one formal notation is compared to another. That is unfair, since the comparison is lacking in substance. So, I set about to incorporating some substance, but I just now did some web searches to see what the formal definition of "standard algebraic notation" is. I did not find anything comprehensive, concise and relevant. My impression, though, is that some aspects must vary from country to country (and in some cases from topic to topic). For that matter, contrast: 2dx+3dy with 2dm+3km or, consider: x0 + x1 + x2 e0 + e1 + e3 2x0 + 2x1 + 2x2 2e0 + 2e1 + 2e3 The resolution to these issues, of course, is to be very careful what we write (for example, if the class uses scientific notation we avoid using e as a variable in a context where it might be confusing). -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
