Hacker News Reader

> Why is it that every time any subject about mathematics comes up there is always a complaint about notation?

The assumption that there is a much better notation is one I tend to see only with the HN crowd. Outside of this group, even people who dislike the notation and/or struggle with math do not claim that a better/simpler one obviously exists.

View on HN

I really only think calculus notation is an issue. Calc 1 books absolutely demand that you view d/dx as an operator and not a ratio, likewise with the dummy variable and integration symbol. Then later the book teaches about unit normals and it’s implicitly acceptable and treat dx/dz and dy/dz as ratios.

i.e. |u X v| = (1 + (dx/dz)^2 + (dy/dz)^2)^(1/2) = (dz^2 + dx^2 + dy^2)^(1/2).

This was extremely frustrating to me for a while until I accepted that this was how Leibniz did it, so if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me.

Yep, blaming your tools is what the incompetent do.

Blaming the user is also what the incompetent do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com