Wednesday, March 30, 2011

When math doesn't speak English

Okay, so maybe for you advanced people out there, this is just "plain as day"
but for me, this is pretty hard to interpret, and I bet other people also have to sit there when they see this kind of stuff and say "uhm, math, please, in ENGLISH?"

So what I want to say is (so that I never waste time googling this again)... that "upside-down A" means "for all"

So lets read this in English.
Line one: the function of y_1 and y_2 is greater than or equal to zero FOR ALL values of y_1 and y_2

... Line 2 later.. just realized I'm late to class. Egads.

2 comments:

  1. I hate it when authors use excessive and/or unnecessary mathematical symbols. The "for all" symbol is an obnoxious example of this.

    Line 2 isn't quite so bad -- it just means that f(y_1,y_2) is normalized (in the physicist's sense that something sums or integrates to 1).

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  2. why thank you! yes double integrals look intimidating, or at least like the letter "s" in german.

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