[OT] Re: [squeak-dev] inverse hyperbolic function

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Fri Apr 22 00:29:42 UTC 2011


On 22.04.2011, at 02:18, Ken G. Brown wrote:

> At 1:43 AM +0200 4/22/11, Levente Uzonyi apparently wrote:
>> On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, Ken G. Brown wrote:
>> 
>>> No one is saying Wolfram is a God, I am just saying that he is an authority on mathematical programming.
>>> Mathematica is very successful, and based on sound mathematical principles.
>>> If you do not want to accept Wolfram as an authority, that's up to you I suppose.
>>> 
>>> I also see Maple uses arcsinh etc.
>>> 
>>> Mathematica and Maple are two of the main mathematical programs out there.
>>> I see no real useful purpose in going against their standards.
>>> And I think you will be hard pressed to find 'H' in the notation for inverse hyperbolic functions in math textbooks.
>> 
>> Should we do everything like VW or Gemstone, just because those are the successful commercial smalltalk implementations nowadays? No. So why should we follow the conventions of the two successful commercial computer algebra systems? And what about Matlab? That's also a "main mathematical program", isn't it?
> 
> I'm basically saying go with the most commonly used conventions of mathematics. I think Mathematica has tried to do that and has documented it well.
> If the function in mathematics is commonly arcsinh, then I'm thinking it should be arcsinh in Squeak, and not redefined in some other somewhat arbitrary way with camelcase.
> 
> Ken

As previously pointed out, Mathematica actually uses CamelCase. If Mathematica can use two capital letters, we are allowed to, too, yes? ;)

I think Nicolas should decide. He has done the most for math support in Squeak over the last years. He probably is implementing it right now anyway ...

- Bert -




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