this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
907 points (97.8% liked)

Science Memes

10493 readers
1720 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
907
gatekeeping (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
93 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] blanketswithsmallpox 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Which negative infinity or positive infinity includes zero?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Brackets and a comma like that indicate a range, not just a list of 2 values

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

But those are parentheses, are they not? I was taught intervals using square brackets and semicolon. While parentheses are used for coordinates and tuples. The square brackets indicates inclusion of the boundary number.

Ie. the statement "2

Update: apparently either lemmy or my app (boost) wasn't that excited for my less than signs, and just skipped the rest of the comment. And here I had spent time copying both "less than or equal to" and infinity signs, since my keyboard doesn't seem to have them... For the time being pls disregard the comment above, while I figure out how to write math on lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's likely just you were taught a different notation. Personally I was taught (x, y) can mean both coordinates x and y or a range from x-y (non inclusive), just depends on context which it is. Brackets like [x,y] I was taught are for inclusive ranges (i.e., x and y are included in the range)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

So, what I was trying to do was use less than signs... Now I'll just write it out instead.

The nomenclature I was taught for intervals used square brackets. But both inclusive and exclusive. If the bracket opens toward the number it's inclusive, if the bracket opens away from the number it's excluded.

The example I tried to use was as follows, 2 less than x and x less than or equal to 5, would be written as x = ]2;5]. While 2 less than x, and x less than 5 would be x = ]2;5[, and 2 less than or equal to x, and x less than or equal to 5, would be x = [2;5]

But it is just nomenclature, but as any other kindergartener I always thought it was universal. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some people uses a period for decimals and not a comma. And that English speakers uses the words millions, billions, and trillions but skips milliards, billiards, and trilliards. Meaning that translating between English and Daniah, you'd need to be keenly aware of the differences - otherwise you'd might try convincing a Dane that there are 1000x more people on earth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Parentheses (also just called brackets here in North America, where the English language comes to die) are used to show that the listed values are not included in the range. They're always used for infinity since infinity isn't a real number.

So 0 to infinity would be [0, ∞). I think the semicolon vs comma is a regional style thing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

It's certainly between them somewhere

[–] bfg9k 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There is actually zero as well as negative zero for reasons beyond my comprehension

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 1 points 9 months ago

That was the root of what I was getting at, thanks lol.