I'm with Gauss here

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"sin2θ is odious to me, even though Laplace made use of it; should it be feared that might become ambiguous, which would perhaps never occur... well then, let us write (sin θ)2, but not sin2θ, which by analogy should signify sin(sin θ)." -- Gauss-Schumacher correspondence, quoted in Eli Maor, Trigonometric Delights.

This must be one of the worst notational choices in mathematics.

Comments

  1. shonk7:06 PM

    Agreed. Yet another example of the evils that follow from mathematicians' laziness about writing parentheses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. scineram11:05 AM

      They aren't going to help if we are only interested in pure functions. If someone wants the derivative of Sin^2, parentheses won't resolve the ambiguity that is the root of the problem.

      Delete
    2. shonk12:07 AM

      Writing sin^2 is way worse than writing sin^2 x.

      Delete

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