Xah's Edu Corner: The importance of syntax & notations.

[Xah Lee]

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/mathml/index.html

i was trying to find the publication date and context, but didn't find
it last time after a couple min.  Yesterday, on rereading, i did. The
article in question is:

«
Mathematical Notation: Past and Future (2000)

Stephen Wolfram
October 20, 2000
Transcript of a keynote address presented at
MathML and Math on the Web: MathML International Conference 2000
»

so, it's a speech for MathML conf in 2000.

so, this explains the error on the plimpton 322. The latest discovery
on that is published in 2002 and later.

the date of this speech also explains parts of the writings about some
mysterious “fundamental science work”, which now we know is his
controversial book A New Kind Of Science (2002).

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

----------------------
Xah Lee  wrote:

Personally, particular interesting info i've learned is that, for all
my trouble in the past decade expressing problems of traditional math
notation, i learned from his article this single-phrase summary:
“traditional math notation lacks a grammar”.  The article is somewhat
disappointing though. I was expecting he'd go into some details about
the science of math notations, or, as he put it aptly: “linguistics of
math notations”. However, he didn't touch the subject, except saying
that it haven't been studied.

upon a more detailed reading of Stephen's article, i discovered some
errors.

On this page:http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/mathml/
mathml2.html

he mentions the Plimpton 322 tablet. It is widely taught in math
history books, that this table is pythagorean triples.

On reading his article, i wanted to refresh my understanding of the
subject, so i looked up Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322

and behold!

apparantly, in recent academic publications, it is suggested that this
is not pythagorean triples, but rather: “a list of regular reciprocal
pairs”.

  Xah
∑http://xahlee.org/

☄