Hi Simon, Le dimanche 4 mars 2018 08:25:09 UTC+1, Simon King a écrit : > > > > What's wrong with v.div(), to cope with standard notation in SageMath? > > Nothing from my point of view: I also prefer object-oriented notations over functional ones and v.div() is already implemented in the ticket (as an alias for v.divergence()). However, I had in mind users who want to use Sage for elementary vector calculus. For them, div(v) is more natural than v.div(), like cos(x) instead of x.cos().
> "div", as a notation for "divergence", could also easily be mistaken > with "division", "divisor", or also "dividend" (IIRC, there *is* some > mathematical finance in SageMath). > > Also one should be aware that "standard mathematical notation" is > usually strongly dependent on context. Yes I agree. > Here is a little anecdote: In > some test, I gave my students the little problem "What is the definition > of the order of a group element?". Surprisingly many of them gave the > definition of an order relation. So, in the next homework, I asked them > to do a little research and find as many different mathematical notions > that are named "order". I think they found more than 10. > Thanks for this anecdote. > > Conclusion: Functions in the global name space lack context, and are thus > often unsuited for mathematical notations. > I agree. > > And even if you absolutely want to put divergence into the global name > space (which already is too much bloated, IMHO), then I think it would > still be a bad idea to put an *abbreviated* function name into the global > name space ("div" instead of "divergence") just because in *some* branch > of mathematics that abbreviation is standard. > > I already did this for the method: divergence() is the true method and div() is a mere alias. Best regards, Eric. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.