Abstract
Mathematics gives solidity to abstract concepts. As for writing in general, there are well-established conventions of presentation for mathematics and mathematical concepts. Reading mathematics is difficult work at the best of times, unpleasant work if the mathematics is badly presented, and pointless if the mathematics does not make sense.
Mathematics is no more than a symbolism. But it is the only symbolism invented by the human mind which steadfastly resists the constant attempts of the mind to shift and smudge the meaning .... Our confidence in any science is roughly proportional to the amount of mathematics it employs—that is, to its ability to formulate its concepts with enough precision to allow them to be handled mathematically.
Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish
The Western Intellectual Tradition
If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.
Richard P. Feynman
The Relation of Mathematics to Physics
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Notes
- 1.
It is said that there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don’t. (And how true it is. A reader suggested that “10” be changed to “ten”.)
- 2.
Though variations of these units are common, with “sec” for seconds, for example, and “hr” for hours. While SI usage is to be encouraged, consistency is essential; choose an abbreviation and stick to it.
- 3.
Except, apparently, when the capacity of disk drives is being discussed. For example, a megabyte of disk is \(10^6=1{,}000{,}000\) bytes, or somewhat less than a megabyte or \(2^{20}=1{,}048{,}576\) bytes of memory.
- 4.
As an engineer might write it. Or “\(4.78\times 10^4\) s”, as it might be written by a mathematician.
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Zobel, J. (2014). Mathematics. In: Writing for Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6639-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6639-9_9
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