Martin Braun wrote:
Another thing worth mentioning (I guess here is a good a place as any
other) is the fact that programming and mathematics are still pretty
different things, despite how much we programmers would like to think
ourselves as some kind of mathematician.
Although when it comes to indexing, mathematics and programming
have remarkably similar issues. I've seen mathematics texts that
made a poor choice of index base and ended up with formulas
confusingly littered with plus and minus ones, or where I've
had to scratch my head a few times and look back to find out
whether a particular index was meant to start from 0 or 1.
Also it doesn't help that the sigma notation lends itself more
to closed than half-open intervals, which can lead to a
Hobson's choice between i-1 in the formulas and n-1 in the
summation range.
--
Greg
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