Was it someone saying "A sup i" for a superscript that gave it away?
Wait, what do people say for superscripts? All my automatic speaking has vanished.
You are hilarious, Heebster. I heart you.
No, really!
I guess you just say "A to the i" for superscripts.
In linear algebra, there's a lot of capital A matrices being raised to kth powers. I took linear algebra the same semester that Cypress Hill came out. All the time the teacher would say, "A to the k", and so I'd always want to say, "A to the mother-fucking k. Homeboy."
We don't talk about superscripts in polite company.
That is great. You are delightful! Hooray.
xi xi / x subscript i / x suffix i / x sub i
Per this reference, which I was surprised even existed.
Just this weekend, at the pet store, I got a request for an "allergy eater" fish.
I knew what he was asking for, which is the important thing. But I kept wanting to ask "Is this like, hayfever level we're talking about? or, like, anaphylactic shock? Cause that's one big damn fish, and we'll have to special order it."
This has no bearing on your story, exactly, I just thought I'd share.
Well you say "a to the k" (with or without the motherfucking) if it's a power. But if it's just a superscript, like in the sentence "consider e_i a basis of V and e^i the dual basis of V*" then you can say "e lower i... e upper i" or "e sub i... e sup i" or just "e i ... e i ..."
9: That reference gives |x| as "modulus x". What does modulus mean to a mathematician in that context? I learned |x| as the absolute value operator.
12: The generalization of absolute value to complex numbers.
Don't tease him like that, Walt.
Heebie: almost always right!
Ah. Mathfuckers. That should be called "magnitude" so as not to confuse me. Jean-Robert Argand should know better than to coin new terminology without consulting me.
That should be called "magnitude" so as not to confuse me.
But then what about ||x||....
"e sub i... e sup i"
`sup' is probably best avoided as ambiguous (think lim sup). I mostly hear `super' and `sub', occasionally upper/lower.
But then what about ||x||....
But that's our good friend Norm!
No way. That is too fucking awesome.
People wanting to speak math should learn Lojban.
Wikipedia informs me that one of the goals of Lojban is "eliminating ambiguity in language". That is hilarious.
23: I find it a regrettable claim, yes. I have even written a page to try to deal with that stupidity.
Also, 21 wasn't very serious. But speaking math in lojban is much easier than in English.
But speaking math in lojban is much easier than in English.
Perhaps... but not as good as speaking math in math, as it were.
I also dislike other things claimed of the language, especially its being "logical". Well, the only sense that it's logical is that it's a very logical (i.e. effective) way to organize a language. I think the origin of the claim is that it has a few constructions that allow you to speak in a style that maps directly to predicate calculus, but that feature of the language is very rarely used.
25: The problem with speaking math in math is that you can't speak it. Math is written, with no good spoken representation.
Math is written, with no good spoken representation.
Right, but that's the best way to do it. If you're just talking, regardless of the language, you'll mostly confuse yourselves and miss things.
The best way to talk math is with a board handy, but a pad of paper will do in a pinch.
23: BTW, the author of the official grammar reference of Lojban comments on my post, agreeing with me.
Wow. I just stumbled across "all intensive purposes" in a real live official government document a couple of weeks ago. Ask W-lfs-n! I emailed him when I saw it out of disbelief.
Did the use seem to fit the literal meaning of the mistaken spelling better than the usual meaning?
So "Kace of i" for K_i makes it sound like i owns the K, which is surprising given that the K is big and powerful looking while the i is small and falling down; I would be more likely to have thought of the K as possessing the i. Way to be open minded to unconventional power structures in relationships!
Anyway, my contribution to this genre: When I was a tyke, my mother would stick me in the back of the Buick and take me on her errands. We'd listen to the poppy KS95 on these trips, and I would often sit there wondering why the refrain of that one Starship song was "when milk is sitting on rock and roll."
Otto's mind was ruined by Grace Slick, alas.
Two hits! (though they heard "the" instead of "when")
This weekend at a conference, it occurred to me that maybe other people say K sub i and M sub j. Who knew.
The Mighty Heebster submits to no man mathematician symbol!
max
['{CRACK!} Down on your knees, my symbol slaves!']
She's been known to use latex, too, I suspect.
I'm guessing she figured this out while listening to ABase.
My only personal example is that I once had a co-worker who used "Pacific" in place of "specific" so there were a lot of emails that included instructions such as "enter this Pacific string of characters to get the boot prompt."
A student of mine used "for all intensive purposes" in a paper proposal last week. I'm not sure if there is any good way to set him straight.
It's not a situation where I'm handing it back with notes written on it.
I'm taking a class with a British professor this semester, and I was deeply concerned at my total lack of familiarity with the concept of an "arry" or a "coroll arry". Luckily he eventually wrote "array" and "corollary" on the board.
I think I pronounce "corollary" as "coroll arry": cor-OH-larry. Is that different?
Warlike strings of characters will just get you locked out of your account.
There's a song by Mr. Scruff where -- even though I know the words -- I can't help but hear this one line as "where the jews taste of honey".
|- /-- __ ###&**
Is that pretty warlike?
A local Freecycler offered to give away a dog. But not just any dog---a "Datsun mix."
I have a cd of devotional songs in Hindi. One of the songs is totally ruined by a repeated phrase that I can't help hearing as "Nasty kitchen, oh, oh!"
Heebs is a sociologists conducting an ethnographic study of mathematicians. I hope you liveblog all your research, heebie.
"Nasty kitchen, oh, oh!"
Who put the goat in there?
The yellow goat I ate!
re: 43
That's how most people corollary, no? It's probably sort of how I'd pronounce array, I think [there is a second vowel, but it's short].
No there's definitely a British and American pronunciation of corollary. Brits emphasizing the second O, Americans the first. I liked it in Spellbound when the contestant asks if the root is related to the car, the Carolla.
When I was little, I heard "in other words" as "another word is." No real meaning lost there.
I did puzzle over "wonerous" for a while before I understood that my correspondent was talking about something "onerous."
56: The best one I've run into in writing was "flupchuis". You know, like Mae West, Jayne Mansfield, etc.
In 1970 I made the pun ASpades. Was I the first? I can't imagine I was. I also made the joke about the busy toilet on the second floor being an hypotenuse.
Oh man, I killed in eighth grade!
The eighth grade comic was me. Some people say I haven't changed.
39is impressive.
Not in the least. Trivial even. Which can easily be seen if one notes that, by the obvious theorem applied in the obvious way,
AceBase = Pcake.
