While I'm not an expert, my guess is that the major uses of 0-based arrays
are in computer science and some computer programming languages, where they
can offer an advantage for some algorithms.
But mathematics is meant for humans, and humans tend to count from 1.
That's why we number the
On August 28, 2020 10:43:07 AM PDT, Benoit wrote:
>defining \pi as half what it should be
Thems fighting words: http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/taupi.html
(And because the internet doesn't easily transmit the slightly wry smile with
which I post this, "fighting words" is meant very loosely
My vote is also in favor of starting with 0, or even better, doing
everything over generic finite sets when possible and falling back on ( 0
..^ N ). I realize that close correspondence with papers is considered
important here but mathematicians write for their own ease. In a math
paper, you can
I'm still in favor of words starting at 0. As for matrix rows and columns,
it would be more...wait for it... natural to start at 0, but since the
literature overwhelmingly prefers to start at 1, maybe it's better to
conform with it (there are a few "historical accidents" like that, for
There was a discussion in
https://groups.google.com/g/metamath/c/UwTUuNPgaB0/m/NdWefzG4AgAJ about the
indices for words. Currently, the indices for words start with 0, and the
proposal to change this was not accepted.
For matrices, however, the things are different: The indices for rows and
