Questions tagged [mathematics]
This tag is for questions on the usage and meaning of mathematical terminology and the names for mathematical entities in English.
259 questions
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Difference between "faster than" and "as fast as"
I want to say that, speed-of-A = (7/4)* speed-of-B. The two sentences that I can think of are:
A runs 7/4 times faster than B.
A runs 7/4 times as fast as B.
I'm told that 1st version is incorrect. I ...
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6
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"Minus" a logarithm
I have to explain in words this formula:
A = -log(X)
My guesses would be either:
A is the minus logarithm of X
A is minus the logarithm of X
Is one of these expressions, or yet another one, correct?
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3
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What is the exact meaning of "3 is not a factor of m or of n"?
3 is not a factor of m or of n.
Meaning of the above statement the way I understand it is 3 is not a factor of m or 3 is not a factor of n.
I think that I might be wrong because here I suggested an ...
- 453
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How to pronounce decimals?
Something like:
0.1
0.23
0.999
How to pronounce them correctly in English?
- 205
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2
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What does the proportion 1:3 mean in the following example?
What does the proportion 1:3 mean in the following example?
In this case the holes were filled with a mixture of cement and sand in the ratio 1:3.
- 87
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2
answers
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Language; math vs maths
I've heard of the term "maths" used by my UK friends, I am from the US and I use the word "math".
Is "maths" grammatically correct?
For me, it rolls off the tongue oddly;
My maths teachers gave us a ...
- 97
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1
answer
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How to read this mathematics value: 10^9
I have this value
How to read that in English? translating from my native language, I would say
Ten base of nine.
but is that really correct?
- 2,704
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In graph's axis, can we say "somewhere between year1 and year2"?
Here is a graph I get somewhere in the internet for illustration:
Can I say
Somewhere between 2006 and 2010, first three lines raise significantly
...?
If we mention about lines, I think using ...
- 2,432
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2
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Should one write Abelian, Noetherian, Artinian by a capital or not?
Which one is the correct way to write abstract algebra?
Let A be a Noetherian ring.
or
Let A be a noetherian ring.
I guess the cases Abelian/abelian, Artinian/artinian behaves similarly.
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2
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something is five times the size of something else - can only mean bigger and never smaller?
A real-world example from a computer book that I've been reading recently:
Bitmaps do not use any compression and can be three or four times the size of the same image in other file types such as ...
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How do you read the number 1.5?
How should you read the number 1.5?
Should I read it as
one and half
or
one and a half
Any help would be appreciated.
- 24.2k
0
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1
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introducing two equivalent adjectives
Let us consider the sentence
We will study certain lattice, or discrete, particle systems.
Let me explain what I am trying to say here. For my potential reader the expressions "lattice particle ...
- 475
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votes
2
answers
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Omitting a preposition to avoid repetition
What is correct/better?
We consider questions related to analysis of real numbers and to probability theory.
We consider questions related to analysis of real numbers and probability theory.
An ...
- 475
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3
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extrapolate vs conjecture
Are these verbs can used interchangeably in the sense of "to guess based on some information".
The remains are conjectured to be thousands of years old.
He conjectured that the company would ...
- 11k
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2
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How to express logarithms verbally?
I'm preparing for the job interview. One of the topics I'm studing is algorithms analysis, which uses so called Big O notation. So, the problem is, I actually don't know how to properly pronounce ...
- 185
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2
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NumerICs vs numerALs, what is the difference if any?
I looked up MW but failed to see whether they are interchangeable.
On a daily basis I find difficulties in adjective forming, so I guess this is just one more of the -IC versus -AL dilemmas, no?
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In math, round down or round up
In math a number can be 'rounded' (sounds strange) up or down. For example if I want to round up to the next whole number (the 2.4 gets 3).
How do I express in English that I always want to round ...
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Is there a short form of "greater than or equal to" (≥)
From this question I know that when mixing "greater than" (>) and "equal to" (=) the correct expression to say is "greater than or equal to"(>=). However, I remember that my math teacher, when writing ...
- 225
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2
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Exist vs exists in mathematics
Are there any rules about when to say exist and when to say exists in mathematics? For example, both these sentences appear in a book of mine:
There exist αi in I such that xn = Σ αi xi.
There exists ...
- 93
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vote
1
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Doubled, Tripled negative counterparts
We can say "The company earnings has doubled/tripled over the period".
My question is - are there negative counterparts for doubled/tripled for the cases when some value lost 50% or 66% of its ...
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What is the right term to indicate the opposite of the math operation distribution?
I am studying math, and there's a term I don't know how to express, I just know that is the opposite of the operation of distribution of terms in an algebraic expression. For example, from the basic ...
user9470
3
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1
answer
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Difference between "outlier" and "offset"
When talking about deviated points (values) from a line formed by points (values) changing in a consistent way in a graph, which word better describe them: outliers or offsets?
What is the difference ...
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Math Expressions
I don't know how to read most of the math expressions.
For example:
2/6
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Is there anything to learn them?
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What do I call the ′ in mathematical formulae?
As in x′ = x + t
"Ex (?) equals ex plus tee".
In Russian it is called "штрих" (shtrikch).
- 701
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differentiating between correlation and a temporal relationship
Could you please through two simple example show me the difference between these?
a significant correlation between the occurrence of two phenomena (both phenomena generally occur together), or
a ...
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1
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Regarding a math function, which is better?
I I want to have a function depicted graphically, which is better?
Draw a graphic of the function
Draw a plot of the function
Make a graphic of the function
Make a plot of the function
Plot a graphic ...
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4
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19
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6
answers
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3
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1
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X is axially symmetric to Y with respect to Z
In the following figure, is it automatically correct and clear to say that
X is axially symmetric to Y with respect to Z
?
Is there any better way to express this fact?
- 6,465
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2
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What's the meaning of “out of”?
average score for admitted students is currently 774 out of 800.
Does that mean the students' average score is 774？
- 83
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Expressing "Every person has a season in which the person thrives" in another form
How do I express the sentence
"Every person has a season in which the person thrives"
in the form
"For every person there is a season ..."
without changing the intended meaning?
Mathematically, ...
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raise by? from?
If the original premium is 100 USD, and the insurance company announced that it would be raised to minimum 105, and maximum 110, which one is correct?
The premium will rise by 5 to 10 percent.
The ...
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3
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Subtracts A from B
This is quite an embarrassing question, but what does it mean subtracting A from B?
B - A (correct, in my opinion)
A - B
I got a bit confused and I wouldn't err all the exercise because of this little ...
user9470
0
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1
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f is a function of a vector argument
I read "f is a scalar function of a vector argument.". This means that the function f take one argument, and more specifically a vector (e.g. [1; 2.156; 1/3]), as input, and outputs a scalar, i.e. a ...
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"calculus" and "the calculus" - what's the difference?
Example:
Now, if you picked up the book and looked through it, the first thing you'd notice is that it was presented in the imposing format that the ancient mathematician Euclid had used in his ...
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1
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articles in "A game in normal form"
I would like to know why there is no article (say "a") in front of the word "normal" in the phrase
A game in normal form?
This phrase is standard in game theory.
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vote
1
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Defining a ball in mathematics
Which are appropriate phrases to define a ball?
Let $B$ be the open ball of radius $r$ centered at $x$.
Let $B$ be the open ball of radius $r$ around $x$.
Let $B$ be the open ball of radius $r$ about $...
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3
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"Only a finite number" or "only finite number"
The question is contained in the title. I think that the noun "number" is countable, therefore "only a finite number" is correct. However, on mathoverflow the expression "only finite number" is also ...
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2
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What does "a value that lies z or more standard deviations above the expected value" mean?
This phrase came from the book Understanding Probability written by Henk Tijms. The original sentence is:
the probability that a normally distributed random variable will take on a value that lies z ...
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Positive probability
Assume that P(A) >0. Can one express this as follows?
The event A has positive probability;
The event A is of positive probability;
The probability of A is positive?
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2
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What does "for ten percent of the time" mean?
There is a sentence:
The study has also found that being sad for ten percent of the time is actually good for you. Let's face it. We can't be happy all the time.
I don't understand the meaning of "...
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1
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"correspondence from A to B" or "correspondence between A and B"
Usually we are familiar with the usage:
"correspondence between A and B"
but can we also use:
"correspondence from A to B" ?
Does the 2nd case grammatically work, too?
Here the correspondence is ...
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Words choice in math related question: "Is this notation [ valid / correct ] for [ showing / expressing ] this summation ?"
I was studying math and while doing some summations I made a notation and I don't know if it's valid/ correct so I was about to ask that on the StackExchange Math Community when I realized that I didn'...
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How to read this formula aloud: "f(x) = x²"?
f(x) = x2
Having heard this read only in Korean, I don’t know how to read it in English. What is the right English reading?
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"Generalize on/to/for" in mathematical texts?
Suppose I have the following piece of mathematical text:
Theorem 1. All natural numbers satisfy ABC.
The following theorem generalizes Theorem 1 to the real numbers:
Theorem 2. All real numbers ...
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Which way: One and one ARE two? One and one IS two?
Which verb is grammatically correct when used to describe addition?
One and one are two.
One and one is two.
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Complicated sentence with mathematical terms [closed]
I wrote this sentence (which is supposed to sound complicated) for a work of fiction, but I'm not sure it is correct English:
"The length of one cathetus in a right triangle with equal catheti is the ...
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1
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a word for algebraic symmetry
There is the algebraic expression a+b+c. If we replace under the rule {a->b, b->c, c->a}, the expression is left unchanged. But for expressions like 2a+b+c, the replacement will change the expression. ...
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"The set of integers" vs. "The set of *the* integers"
Which is preferable to say, "the set of integers" or "the set of the integers", when I want to refer to the set {0, ±1, ±2, ...}?
Intuitively, I would say "the set of the integers", because "a set of ...
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Can I say "vector sizes"?
I want to say "size of vectors" but instead of using "of" I want to use something like "vector size" but in the plural form what should I say? Is "vector sizes" right form?