Errm ... my esteemed colleague's enthusiasm for his subject occasionally gets the better of him. I venture to suggest that it must be quite impossible for anybody outside hardcore number theory to comprehend why these distinctions matter in the slightest, let alone cause steam to issue from various anatomical orifices. Specialists of any field need to beware of attempting to co-opt for a highly technical purpose any term previously in common use for a less constrained notion. Some etymologically challenged analyst's decision to christen infinite sums "series" --- a usage fortunately now largely abandoned --- hardly confers on the rest of humanity any obligation to refrain from continuing to conflate that word with "sequence", even in a mathematical context. Also similar situations occur routinely elsewhere: for example it is frequently important to distinguish between singular and nonsingular square matrices, without any perceived necessity to concoct separate terms for the two cases. What's wrong with (say) "non-unit" divisor/factor, whenever called for? WFL On 2/15/17, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
Date: 2017-02-14 09:16 From: Nick Baxter <nickb@baxterweb.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Reply-To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com>
ok, someone has to ask...factor and divisor are the same thing;
Argh! I had no idea how many people believe this!
why are you implying otherwise?
Because they're different!
I know there is potential confusion with prime factor and factorization, but they're different issues.
Nick
Primality isn't the issue. How many factors of 6 are there in 12? How many factors of 1? 1 is not a goddam factor of anything. --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun