BB84Apr 7, 2025

someone teach them LaTeX

https://mander.xyz/post/27771350

someone teach them LaTeX - Mander

A microblog post by @kareem_carr saying “as soon as i saw they were using asterisks for multiplication symbols, i knew we were in trouble”, with an image from the “Office of the United States Trade Representative (Executive Office of the President)” showing the mathematical formula $\Delta \tau_i = \frac{x_i - m_i}{\varepsilon * \varphi * m_i}$. The formula show asterisks (*) instead of multiplication signs (×).

Show threadWhiteOakBayouApr 7, 2025
I don’t get the significance. How should the formula be represented?
Show threadBB84Apr 7, 2025

The only times anyone would use the asterisk as multiplication symbol are

  • they are doing some fancy math and it’s not the same kind of number multiplication we’re familiar with
  • they are on a computer, the keyboard does not have a (×) key, and they don’t know how to typeset it (\times in LaTex), so they just use the asterisk instead
Show threadnaoApr 7, 2025

there is a third case:

  • they are using a programming language
Show threadvaionko
Or me, doing math for school and being too lazy to type /cdot every time
Apr 7, 2025 at 9:14pmWeb