--- Daniel Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
... The second article *pretends* to proceed formally by asserting a finite number of "Postulates", but these are *not* well-defined postulates in terms of mathematics. E.g., they assume the "flow" of time -- something not even physics knows how to discuss in its own language. And this is purely a matter of personal taste, but as long as the article is supposed to be an introduction to quantum mechanics for un-quantum-enlightened mathematicians, it drives me up the wall that the article abandons mathematical notation for quantum notation. The material is esoteric enough without throwing another great big roadblock in the reader's way. I fully agree with the author's claim that to read further in the quantum literature, one needs to know standard quantum notation, but that does not justify using it in the boy of this article. The notational equivalence could have been relegated to an appendix.
But this contradicts your earlier request for using standard notation. The standard notation for quantum mechanics is that which is used by the physicists. Perhaps what is really inappropriate about this paper is attempting to explain quantum mechanics within the very brief space permitted. It would be a better allocation of resources to cite some standard textbooks, and proceed to the main point of the article.
...
One of my main gripes about the Monthly is that sometimes the articles are dumbed down. Some years ago there was a paper about one dimensional manifolds. Great, I thought, maybe I'll learn something about the long line. But no, the author acknowledged that there was one more manifold called the long line, but it was outside the scope of the the paper. Eventually I decided that the MAA and the Monthly were outside my scope, and allowed my membership to lapse. Gene __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail