/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11074122
>The way programming languages require you to write down fractions is horrific for readability.
I think you miss my point. Multiplication is not too bad either, so division doesn't have to be as well. Write a#b for [math]\frac{a}{b}[/math]. It's all just conventions and we're stucking to thousand year old ones. (Not saying it's possible to change it now, given that everybody is used to it.)

What does that mean?
[math] \dot{x} (t)[/math]

I know it's good and efficient for humans. But I think by now I wrote down more math in text than paper. Those peoples habits won't change in the other direction in the future. I presume.

>improvement
Well writing function application on the side you're writing to would be a good start. If you write from left to right like we do, then xfg instead of gfx would help everybody. I know it looks weird once you're used to something, but changing state of things by appending is much easier to parse than adding more prefixes.

Similarly, base 12 is better than base 10 is many way. It's nor an accident that time (60) and angles (360) are multiples of 12. It's because humans are good in the range up to maybe 20, and the number 12=2*2*3 has more prime factors than 10=2*5.
One hour having 60 minues means that
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 minutes
are all sensible divisions of an hour - a large amount only because the numbers were choosen to have many divisors. 60 really is only adding that next prime divisor (5) that 12 doesn't have yet.

Okay the last one isn't actually a notation thing, but goes along the same lines.