WingedViper comments on Rationality Quotes October 2012 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: MBlume 02 October 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: pragmatist 06 October 2012 07:35:07AM *  2 points [-]

You have an inequality symbol missing at the end of the quote (between i and j). That made it slightly difficult for me to parse it on my first read-through ("Why does it say 'for all i, j' when the only index in the expression is 'i'?").

Comment author: WingedViper 09 October 2012 01:52:37PM 1 point [-]

I don't know if you know, but just in case you (or someone else) don't: There is no inequality symbol on the computer keyboard, so he used a typical programmer's inequality symbol which is "!=". So yes, it is not easily readable (i! is a bad combination...) but totally correct.

Comment author: pragmatist 09 October 2012 02:20:38PM *  3 points [-]

The symbol wasn't there when I wrote my comment. It was edited in afterwards.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 October 2012 12:53:56PM *  2 points [-]

(i! is a bad combination...)

The way to handle that is whitespace: i != 0. (I once was teased by my tendency to put whitespace in computer code around all operators which would be spaced in typeset mathematical formulas.)

EDIT: I also use italics for variables, boldface for vectors, etc. when handwriting. Whenever I get a new pen I immediately check whether it's practical to do boldface with it.

Comment author: Dan_Moore 09 October 2012 02:29:23PM 2 points [-]

A space between variable & operator would help.