Hi Simon,
Le dimanche 4 mars 2018 08:25:09 UTC+1, Simon King a écrit :
>
>
>
> What's wrong with v.div(), to cope with standard notation in SageMath?
>
>
Nothing from my point of view: I also prefer object-oriented notations over
functional ones and v.div() is already implemented in the ticket (as an
alias for v.divergence()). However, I had in mind users who want to use
Sage for elementary vector calculus. For them, div(v) is more natural than
v.div(), like cos(x) instead of x.cos().
> "div", as a notation for "divergence", could also easily be mistaken
> with "division", "divisor", or also "dividend" (IIRC, there *is* some
> mathematical finance in SageMath).
>
> Also one should be aware that "standard mathematical notation" is
> usually strongly dependent on context.
Yes I agree.
> Here is a little anecdote: In
> some test, I gave my students the little problem "What is the definition
> of the order of a group element?". Surprisingly many of them gave the
> definition of an order relation. So, in the next homework, I asked them
> to do a little research and find as many different mathematical notions
> that are named "order". I think they found more than 10.
>
Thanks for this anecdote.
>
> Conclusion: Functions in the global name space lack context, and are thus
> often unsuited for mathematical notations.
>
I agree.
>
> And even if you absolutely want to put divergence into the global name
> space (which already is too much bloated, IMHO), then I think it would
> still be a bad idea to put an *abbreviated* function name into the global
> name space ("div" instead of "divergence") just because in *some* branch
> of mathematics that abbreviation is standard.
>
>
I already did this for the method: divergence() is the true method and
div() is a mere alias.
Best regards,
Eric.
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