March 2005 - mathfun@mailman.xmission.com

[math-fun] Re: Tool for writing mathematic documents
by David Wilson 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

- David W. Wilson "Truth is just truth -- You can't have opinions about the truth." - Peter Shickele, from P.D.Q. Bach's oratorio "The Seasonings"

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[math-fun] The logician in hell
by Thane Plambeck 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

This is from Dante's Inferno (Ciardi translation, Canto XXVII, "The evil counselors") -- Later, when I was dead, St. Francis came to claim my soul, but one of the Black Angels said, 'Leave him. Do not wrong me. This one's name went into my book the moment he resolved to give false counsel. Since then he has been mine, for who does not repent cannot be absolved; nor can we admit the possibility of repenting a thing at the same time it is willed, for the two acts are contradictory.' Miserable me! with what contrition I shuddered when he lifted me, saying: 'Perhaps you hadn't heard that I was a logician.' Thane Plambeck http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm

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[math-fun] Tool for writing mathematical documents
by David Wilson 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Is there a free or cheap tool for writing mathematical papers and such?

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[math-fun] keeping things in order
by David Gale 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

How do you write your polynomials, ax^2+bx+c or c+bx+ax^2? Traditionally it seems the first way is most common. Why? The second would seem more natural. Don't we generally like to have things (like exponents) increasing from left to right? By contrast, for power series we have a_0+a_1x+a_2x^2+ . . ., (never. . .+a_2x^2+a_1x+a_0). For that matter, why do we write our numerals so that ten is written 10 rather than 01? As with polynomials, the digits of a numeral represent coefficients of powers of ten in decreasing order from left to right. Aha, I get it! Of course. They're Arabic numerals and therefore were read by their creators from right to left. That doesn't explain the polynomials though, or did we get them from the Arabs too? Some further random related observations. 1. Reversing the digit order convention would make addition and multiplication feel more natural since in applying the algorithms one first learns the units digit, then the tens and so on. When we "carry" we would move digits "forward", when we borrow we'd move them backwards. 2. How would you feel about pi ~95414.3? It would certainly take getting used to. 3. Lets look at the "names" for the numerals. English: seven-teen, eight-teen,. ., so far so good, increasing exponent order, but then we do twenty one, twenty two, Arabic order. French: At least it's consistently Arabic. dix-sept, dix-huit, and vingt six, vingt sept. Spanish, Italian the same, but, 4.German: consistently anti-Arabic, achtzehn, neunzehn, zwanzig, ein und zwanzig, but after 100 we get, for example, 123 is ein hundert drei und zwazig so 123 gets permuted to 132, the middle digit comes last! 5. The above suggests that the different digit orderings is a Romance vs. Germanic language thing. However, going back to the Latin is no help since they didn't have the Arabic place system. For example 18 I just learned is "duodevigniti". How would a Roman say "You owe me XXXIV denarius" I wonder.

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[math-fun] math paper tool = latex
by Chris Landauer 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

hihi, all - i've used latex for some decades now (well, maybe two), and found it to be superb for what i need it runs on unixen and on windows it is free it is supported by a wide community more later, cal

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[math-fun] Re: math paper tool = latex
by M. Stay 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

Also, if you're putting stuff online and want to use mathml but don't care about anything but presentation (i.e. no semantics like invisible multiplication) you should look at asciimath http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciimath.html If you're doing online graphics, look at AsciiSVG: http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciisvg.html -- Mike Stay staym(a)clear.net.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~msta039

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[math-fun] [latex, not math content] paper writing tool = latex
by Chris Landauer 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

hihi, all - i forgot to add that latex runs on macs, too, and probly a bunch of other systems and machines i don't know about i think that the fact that latex is not wysiwyg is one of its most important advantanges, since you can see the commands that cause the formatting (as you could in word perfect, but mostly can't in word), so you can set th eformatting rules as you like them all of the commands can be considered to be meta-knowledge about the format of the paper, and it is all accessible and changeable (e.g., is it easy to change all of the 11-point characters to 12-point, without changing any of the other sizes? i end up needing to do stuff like that a lot, as i switch from a draft mode to a final submission mode without changing the text at all) yes, it was not easy to change from scribe to latex (in late 1987, i think), especially with the only latex book at the time, written by leslie lamport, but it was worth it for the formatting of the mathematical equations - i write 30-40 technical papers or reports every year, so the knowledge doesn't leak out as much as if i wrote less the two books i use all the time for latex information are the latex companion, by goossens, mittelbach, and samarin and the latex graphics companion by goossens, rahtz, and mittelbach george gra:tzer wrote a latex book also, which has more than the other books about making certain mathematical expressions in latex more soon, cal

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