[texhax] Math notation

E. Krishnan ekmath at asianetindia.com
Wed May 10 04:46:35 CEST 2006


On Tue, 9 May 2006, Lars Madsen wrote:

> From my knowlage it is mostly in physics those ISO specifications are 
> widely used. To a mathematician (I have a degree in math) it just looks 
> unnatural.

Sure it does, since we've been seeing the whole "dx" in italics for all
these years. But from a strictly notational point of view, it is
equivalent to the product of the variables "d" and "x". So, a striaght "d"
and a slanted "x"  seems to be a more consistent notation, emphasizing the
fact that "d" is an operator and "x" is a variable. Remains to be seen if
this finds acceptance among mathematicians. In the history of mathematical
symbols, we've quite a few instances of innovations losing out.

-- 
Krishnan




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