Curious assignment behaviour

[Mikael Olofsson]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:54:29 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
 > >In mathematics, "=" is an assertion that two expressions have the same
 > >value over the applicable portion of the domain. Pure mathematics
 > >doesn't have an equivalent of assignment.

On 16-Oct-2001 David C. Ullrich wrote:
 >  In fact lots of people do use := to distinguish assignment
 >  from comparison all the time in mathematics. Not everyone.
 >  But everyone says things like "Let x = 42", which certainly
 >  looks to me like an assignment. (One might argue that it's
 >  equivalent to saying "Consider now the case x = 42", so it's
 >  actually a comparison, not an assignment. If one argued that
 >  one would have to explain why "Let 42 = x" doesn't fly.)

An = with a triangle above is also used to mean "define to be" (or 
something similar), which comes fairly close to assignment to me. 

Magnified:

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It-always-makes-my-students-confused-ly y'rs
/Mikael

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Date:    17-Oct-2001
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