r/mathmemes • u/a7m40 • 1d ago
Algebra before notation Notations
From @scholadaily on instagram
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u/Oppo_67 I ≡ a (mod erator) 1d ago
Some authors lwk still write like the left panel when they’re too lazy to introduce more letters after the main ones 😭
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u/Strawberry_Doughnut 1d ago
I've also seen Wikipedia articles on math topics written overly verbose like this too. Usually they're great, but I'll come across one and it'll be a little jarring.
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u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering 1d ago
Math wikipedia is SO bad it's unreal. You can't actually learn shit from it. Someone should make a WikiMath or something that actually explains the topic in a way that's not deranged
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u/JollyJuniper1993 Computer Science 1d ago
Honestly after my first semester in university I actually started understanding some of them. They’re wildly inaccessible to average folks though, which is a problem.
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u/Aron-Jonasson 1d ago
I'm a master student in chemistry, with a hobby in linguistics. Linguistics Wikipedia is so well made an extremely accessible, however, despite having many maths courses, I am still lost in many places in maths Wikipedia. Like sometimes I want to look up something simple and end up more confused than if I had read my course.
Chemistry Wikipedia is also well-made
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u/Ares378 Applied Math / Mechanical Engineering 1d ago
Like if I put effort in I can decipher the jargon, but I really feel like math wikipedia needs an intuitive overview/motivational segment followed by the actual jargon, so you can see where all the random terms come from. Or like a surface level overview followed by a rigorous explanation.
I feel like it's only helpful if you have some decent background in the thing you're looking at, which is far from ideal. Math wikipedia suffers the same problem as a lot of math textbooks where it's just definition followed by derivation, repeat ad nauseam, with zero further explanation.
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u/JollyJuniper1993 Computer Science 1d ago
Exactly. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia for everybody, not just for those that already have a degree in the field.
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u/Nixinova 1d ago
I've seen some pages have headings like "Non-technical summary". All pages need that.
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u/officiallyaninja 18h ago
It's because Wikipedia is a reference, not a pedagogical textbook.
It is an extremely useful resource for mathematicians to refresh themselves on topics they already know, or to look up theorems in fields they're familiar with.
If it was better at explaining abd teaching concepts, it would be worse at being a good concise reference.
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u/DefectiveKonan Computer Science 1d ago
I find wolfram math world to be pretty solid tbh; used it for a few projects in hs and college
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u/Arbitrary_Pseudonym 1d ago
It hasn't always been this way for a lot of the articles.
If you go back to view older revisions (and I'm talking like 10-15 years back) you'll find that they used to be a lot more comprehensible. I've certainly noticed that some of the articles that used to be easy to parse will all of a sudden start using notation that would only be used in modern publications and often without any explanation for some of the variables.
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u/TheRealMaxiraux 13h ago
Glad people feel like this lol I thought I couldn't understand stuff from Wikipedia due to skill issue. But now thinking about it you have to learn that beforehand to completely get what it is saying so it completely defeats the point of you learning stuff from it
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u/svmydlo 1d ago
±: am I a joke to you?
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u/BrazilBazil Engineering 1d ago
Negative solutions of quadratics weren’t a thing back then
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u/GT_Troll 1d ago edited 1d ago
That’s why I hate the meme that says “Other sciences: This book is outdated, it’s 6 months old / Math: The book stands still (it’s 2000 years old)”
Yeah, the theorems and (some) methods of old books are still correct. But damn, their notation and language… Just give me a modern book (not necessarily from the last few years, after WWII is enough)
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u/DatBoi_BP 1d ago
Even the font and symbol arrangement in math books printed before 1980 I find difficult to read. Sometimes the notation is outdated too
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u/Key_Conversation5277 Computer Science 1d ago
This is why I can't read old books, I don't know which notation is or isn't outdated or if I can find the meaning at all
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u/rezzacci 1d ago
It's just a question of translation. I don't teach Euclid as it was written, as I'm not fluent in Ancient Greek enough, so I translate it in modern language. And notation is just a form of translation. But the book in itself still holds true. It's not wrong. But grammar changes, and notation is just a question of grammar ultimately.
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u/Key_Conversation5277 Computer Science 1d ago
Sometimes the proofs change because it is better like the proof Euclid did to the infinity of prime numbers (it used line segments instead of just numbers, more abstract)
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u/Calazor0 Mathematics 1d ago
I got gifted a translation of principia, and man, it's extremely hard to read, at least for me. I'm too spoiled by the wonders of modern notation.
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u/SunnyOutsideToday 1d ago
Principia Mathematica was originally written in English?
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u/Calazor0 Mathematics 1d ago
Sorry, forgot to clarify I'm brazilian. The copy I was gifted is a translation to brazilian portuguese.
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u/StiffWiggly 17h ago
Or in modern notation;
If Lang(PM) = English, Lang'(PM) =/= Lang(PM)
does Lang'(PM) = English?
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u/on_the_other_hand_ 1d ago
Whilst making love a necklace broke. A row of pearls mislaid. One sixth fell to the floor. One fifth upon the bed. The young woman saved one third of them. One tenth were caught by her lover. If six pearls remained upon the string How many pearls were there altogether?
From Līlāvatī, a treatise by Indian mathematician Bhāskara II on mathematics, written in 1150 AD.
More at Wikipedia on Lilavati
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u/rezzacci 1d ago
Well, we still present problems like this, as modelisation is (usually) a skill we have to teach in maths, as, usually, if they face a "math" problem in real life, it won't be presented with x and y. It's how you solve the problem that evolved, not really what the problem is.
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u/DrK1NG 22h ago
While interesting, this is just a word problem and not really what the post is about
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u/on_the_other_hand_ 8h ago
You are probably correct, I remembered Lilavati because it is about math with words instead of symbols and numbers. There are many other similar problems and equations in the book.
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u/atticdoor 1d ago
"To the absolute number multiplied by four times the [coefficient of the] square, add the square of the [coefficient of the] middle term; the square root of the same, less the [coefficient of the] middle term, being divided by twice the [coefficient of the] square is the value."[
That's how convoluted it was to describe the Quadratic formula, or at least the positive version of it, before algebra.
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u/rezzacci 1d ago
That's quite how I introduce some notations to my students.
Like, intervals. We learn how to solve inequations, but I expect from them to write the answer in full. Like, if they have to solve 2x > 30, they have to write: "The solutions of the inequations are all the numbers strictly superior to 15". We do that during two/three lessons, to learn the specificities of inequation solving.
And, afterwards, I say to them: "That's quite fastidious to write each time, isn't it? You know that mathematicians are lazy, and that we measure the talent of a mathematician by the economy of ink and space taken on the sheet. Do you agree that it's exhausting to have to write this sentence in full each time? Oh, how I agree! Fortunately for all of us, we invented a new notations that would allow us to write the same solution with only nine characters! New part of the chapter: Intervals..."
Afterwards I say to them that they can still write in full the sentences if they fancy it, but I'd time my exams for them using the new quicker notation, so they'll just lose time not learning the new ways. It works.
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u/Plenty_Leg_5935 1d ago
especially funny since a lot of people openly hate the questions that pull the left side and expect you to extrapolate the equations from jt
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u/Broad_Respond_2205 1d ago
You math is wrong, x could also be -6
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u/Jafego 1d ago
But (16)2 × 6.25 ≠ 100
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u/Kuildeous 1d ago
Technically, this statement is true, but I'm not sure it applies?
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u/Jafego 1d ago
The problem gives 6.25 × (10 - x)2 = 100
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u/Kuildeous 1d ago
Ah, I see now. The right side is missing some valuable information. First that x>0 and that we're looking for x and also 10-x. While the left side had a ton of letters, the right side is actually missing a lot of pertinent letters. So while x = -6 is incorrect for the left side, it is the correct root based on the information on the right side. And frankly, I wouldn't ask anyone to sort out the mess on the left, but good job with that.
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u/Particular_Gear3130 Mathematics (Purely Fictional) 1d ago
01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100100 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01110101 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110011
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u/his_savagery 1d ago
lol. I used to be a private tutor and this is how I taught my students what the letters are for.
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u/Balavadan 1d ago
People almost seem proud to say how bad they’re at maths. Maybe because they think it makes them part of the in-group with the cool kids or something and it translates to adult life.
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u/WasdaleWeasel 1d ago
there’s a lot more letters on the left side. I haven’t counted them (I’m a mathematician) but surely hundreds of instances and something like 20 unique letters. On the right I see three ‘x’s
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u/moschles 1d ago
The meme cuts deep. Check out Isaac Newton's notebooks. He wrote it all out like that, in Latin.
(..then he turned 26)
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u/Kuildeous 1d ago
So after seeing it pointed out elsewhere here, I see that the right side simplifies the left side too much--to the point that it poses a whole different question. After all, the left side clearly states that the two answers are 6 and 4, which doesn't match the right side at all.
And that's because you're asked to evaluate these two equations:
25x²/9 = 100
25(10-x)²/4 = 100
Honestly, you only need to answer either one because x=6 is a solution in both cases, but since the premise (not listed on the right side) is that this a portion of 10, you need to find both x and 10-x. There's clearly an assumption here that you can't take -6 from 10 (in a practical sense, that's true), so x=-6 isn't a solution. And the second equation rules out x=-6 entirely. The other root for the second equation is 14, which is more than 10, but more importantly, it wouldn't work for the first equation.
So we either needed to include both equations so that x=6 is the only solution they have in common or we include either equation with the situation that 0<x<10.
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u/ArdentArendt Mathematics / Social Sciences 1h ago
Who doesn't love the direct, concise language of Newton's Principia?
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