2011/10/19 Alexander Lazarević laza@blobworks.com:
Nicolas,
it seems that I have failed to express myself clearly, so that you were misreading me. What I was trying to say was that I assume that most people get introduced to the symbols = and ≠ for equality and unequality early on. And that the symbol ≠ for unequality isn't (is not) ~ nor any composition that includes ~. I didn't intent to say that I assume that ~ is a very common symbol for the NOT operator and that most people learn about it as early as they learn about = and ≠.
Nice case of misinterpretation indeed! My failure...
Nicolas
So my gut feeling still is, that one would favor an expression that contains the most familiar = symbol (or ==) over an equivalent expression of same complexity, but that contains ~ (~= or ~~) instead, which is not as deeply rooted in our brains.
2011/10/18 Nicolas Cellier nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com
Well, is ~ interpretation ubiquitous ?
With the above it's hopefully no surprise that I think it's not.
I rather learned ¬ NOT SIGN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_not
Same here, but over the years I also saw !x, bar below x, bar above x, dot below x and even dot above x ... meaning NOT.
And if ≠ is translated /= in ASCII (FORTRAN 95 & ADA) Then by analogy ~= could ambiguously mean ≃ ASYMPOTICALLY EQUAL TO and ~~ mean ≈ ALMOST EQUAL TO unless it is ≅ APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO .
Alex