On Aug 22, 2009, at 11:49 AM, Mark Wassell wrote:
Think about how you would convert this into Haskell. You might then find yourself wondering why you have to convert it into Haskell at all.
But very quickly you realise that it is because a lot of mathematical notation is heavily ambiguous and requires fairly sophisticated N.I. to parse correctly. [N.I. = natural intelligence. I don't know how to program a computer to do it.] -1 For example, if x is a number, x is its reciprocal. But if x is a function, it's the inverse function. Some of the most appalling mathematical notation can be found in the Correspondence Analysis community, where the meaning of a subscript may depend not on the value of the subscript expression but its spelling. In that case, converting the mathematics to Haskell would be an act of great charity not for programmers but for _any_ mortals trying to make sense of the formulas.