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>i was half-joking, but you honestly thin that today's general population isn't familiar with simple multiplication?

Fuck, if I have to be a pedant, I'd better go all the way: well, they might be, but

1) they don't use * as the multiplication symbol, but ~ "x".

2) they don't multiply words and numbers... Repeating a string this way is something programmers do.

As pointless as this discussion is, I originally wrote `x` but considering my audience is mostly programmers changed it to `*`

I don't think anyone will have difficulty grasping that 'Simplify Simplify Simplify' and 'Simplify x 3' can be considered equal.

If you have to be a pedant and tell people to use a multiplication symbol, then use a multiplication symbol. The symbol is × (×), not the letter X.

If you want to be a better pedant, you better start paying attention, like for example to the fact that I alluded to x not being the multiplication symbol by a) putting it in quotes and b) writing ~ "x", where ~ is the well known "approximately equal to" math symbol.

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