Jacques Carette carette at mcmaster.ca
Fri Jan 28 17:48:13 EST 2005

[I have now subscribed to haskell-cafe]

Henning Thielemann <lemming at henning-thielemann.de> wrote:
> This seems to be related to what I wrote yesterday

Yes, very much.  Except that rather than trying to tell mathematicians that they are *wrong*, I am trying to see which
of their notations I can explain (in a typed way).  There will be some 'leftovers', where the notation is simply bad.

> I've collected some examples of abuse and bad mathematical notation:
>  http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~thielema/Research/notation.pdf

Some of what you point out there is bad notation.  Other bits point to some misunderstanding of the issues.

Starting from your original post:
> f(x) \in L(\R)
>    where f \in L(\R) is meant
>
> F(x) = \int f(x) \dif x
>    where x shouldn't be visible outside the integral

First, mathematicians like to write f(x) to indicate clearly that they are denoting a function.  This is equivalent to
writing down (f \in -> ) with domain/range omitted.

Second, every mathematician knows that \int f(x) \dif x == \int f(y) \dif y (ie alpha conversion), so that combined
with the previous convention, there is no confusion in writing F(x) = \int f(x) \dif x.  It is just as well-defined as
(\x.x x) (\x.x x)
which requires alpha-conversion too for proper understanding.

You also write
> O(n)
>    which should be O(\n -> n) (a remark by Simon Thompson in
>                                The Craft of Functional Programming)
but the only reason for this is that computer scientists don't like open terms.  Since the argument to O must be a
univariate function with range the Reals, then whatever is written there must *denote* such a function.  The term
n'' can only denote only one such function, \n -> n.  So the mathematician's notation is in fact much more pleasing.

However, you have to remember one crucial fact: a set of typographical symbols are meant to *denote* a value, they are
not values in themselves.  So there is always a function around which is the denotes'' function that is implicitly
applied.  Russell's work in the early 1900, "sense and denotation" are worth reading if you want to learn more about
this.

What is definitely confusing is the use of = with O notation.  The denotation there is much more complex - and borders
on incorrect.

> a < b < c
>    which is a short-cut of a < b \land b < c

That is plain confusion between the concepts of denotation'' and value''.  Where < is a denotation of a binary
function from bool x bool -> bool, _ < _ < _ is a mixfix denotation of a constraint, which could be denoted in a
long-winded fashion by
p a b c = a<b and b<c
but more accurately by
p a c = \b -> b \in )a,c(
where I am using mathematical notation for the body above.

On your notation.pdf'' (link above), you have some other mis-interpretations.  On p.10 you seem to think that
Mathematica is a lazy language, when it is in fact an eager language.  So your interpretation does not make sense''.
Not that your observation is incorrect.  In Maple, there are two functions, eval(expr, x=pt) and subs(x=pt, expr)
which do similar'' things.  But subs is pure textual substitution (ie the CS thing), whereas 2-argument eval means
"evaluate the function that \x -> expr denotes at the point pt" (ie the math thing).  The interesting thing is that
"the function that \x -> expr denotes" is allowed to remove (removeable) singularities in its denotation'' map.
However,
> subs(x=2,'diff'(ln(x),x)) ;
diff(ln(2),2)
where the '' quotes mean to delay evaluation of the underlying function.  On the other hand
> eval('diff'(ln(x),x),x=2) ;
eval('diff'(ln(x),x),x=2)
because it makes no sense to evaluate an open term which introduces a (temporary) binding for one of its variables.

Note that without access to terms, it is not possible to write a function like diff (or derive as you phrase it, or D
as Mathematica calls it).  Mathematician's diff looks like it is has signature diff: function -> function, but it in
fact is treated more often as having signature diff: function_denotation -> function_denotation.  But you can see a
post by Oleg in December on the haskell list how it is possible (with type classes) in Haskell to automatically pair
up function and function_denotation.

You also seem to assume that set theory is the only axiomatization of mathematics that counts (on p.31).  I do not see
functions A -> B as somehow being subsets of powerset(A x B).  That to me is one possible 'implementation' of
functions.  This identification is just as faulty as the one you point out on p.14 of the naturals not really''
being a subset of the rationals.  In both cases, there is a natural embedding taking place, but it is not the
identity.

You also have the signature of a number of functions not-quite-right.  indefinite'' integration does not map
functions to functions, but functions to equivalence classes of functions.  Fourier transforms (and other integral
transforms) map into functionals, not functions.

I hope your audience (for things like slide 35) was made of computer scientists - it is so amazingly condescending to
thousands of mathematicians, it is amazing you would not get immediately booted out!

On p.37, you have polynomials backwards.  Polynomials are formal objects, but they (uniquely) denote a function.  So
polynomials CANNOT be evaluated, but they denote a unique function which can.

On p.51 where you speak of hidden'' quantifiers, you yourself omit the thereexists quantifiers that are implicit on
the last 2 lines -- why?

The above was meant to be constructive -- I apologize if it has come across otherwise.  This is an under-studied area,
and you should continue to look at it.  But you should try a little harder to not assume that thousands of
mathematicians for a couple of hundred years (at least) are that easily wrong''.  Redundant, sub-optimal, sure.

Jacques