I agree with Allan 100%; I didn't mean to suggest that "weakly positive" would be any clearer. Jim On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 8:58 AM, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:
So your intent is that "weakly positive" be a synonym for "nonnegative" that is more perspicuous to non-mathematicians? I think it will not serve.
On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 8:24 AM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, nonnegative is the standard term for this, but I disagree that its meaning is immediately obvious to non-mathematicians: even some intelligent laypeople don’t realize you can take the word apart and deduce its meaning (a nonnegative number is a number that is not negative), while others confuse “not negative” with “positive”.
Jim
On Friday, July 27, 2018, Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> wrote:
I've always heard "nonnegative" used for this concept. One word, four syllables, and meaning is immediately obvious even if you've never heard the word before. Better than two words, five syllables, and unfamiliar.
Andy
On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 12:53 AM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
f(x)=ax is strictly increasing iff a>0 and weakly increasing iff a >= 0, and we sometimes say that a is strictly positive as a way of saying a>0, so shouldn’t we say a is weakly positive iff a>=0?
Does anyone use the phrase “weakly positive” in this way?
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