Pascal was the first real language I learned (after basic)
Same. Taught myself some Basic in high school (first on a school computer, then we got a computer at home), learnt Pascal in 1st year Uni (programming basics - wrote a bunch of stuff for myself in Pascal for my computer) then C in 2nd year (OOP), and then Assembler in 3rd year. Later I taught myself (with the help of some books and courses.... and intellisense! 😂) C#.
My calculator says -2² = -4
That's correct
I think it was something like : -2 is a diminutive for -1x2
Correct. Things that are usually left out of Maths expressions are plus signs, ones as multipliers/indices, and un-needed brackets. e.g. I could more fully write this as -1(4)², but that just simplifies to -4²
Aimed at any developers in the Fediverse, so no :-)
Calculate 8 ÷ 2a where a = 4. Then,
Calculate 8 ÷ 2 × a where a = 4.
See how in the first form a is implied to be part of the fraction where in the second it isn’t?
It's not implied, it's explicitly because of the definition of Terms.
P.S. now substitute a=2 and you'll see why it matters.
A dot • could be between 2 and a and it would still follow the first example
No, it wouldn't. Inserting a dot (multiplication) makes it the same as your second example. i.e. 3 Terms, not 2 Terms.
In vector multiplication, dot and cross products produce different results.
This isn't vector multiplication. This is Year 7 algebra.
why wouldn’t it be math, especially when that would follow what you did with television
Because television is singular (a TV set) and Maths is plural, same as Bros. is the abbreviation of brothers. i.e. when abbreviating a plural you keep the "s".
Yeah, didn't think that came from any textbook.
And also if I hadn't been replying to this thread then you wouldn't have got the proof that you were right. :-)
Yeah, that's exactly the problem with TI calculators - ignoring the rules of Maths.
While I agree the problem as written is ambiguous
It's not.
the answer pretty much always ends up being something along the lines of “well the experts do this” or “this professor at this prestigious university says this”, or “the scientific community says”.
Agree completely! Notice how they ALWAYS leave out high school Maths teachers and textbooks? You know, the ones who actually TEACH this topic. Always people OTHER THAN the people/books who teach this topic (and so always end up with the wrong conclusion).
while basic education and basic calculators use weak juxtaposition
Literally no-one in education uses so-called "weak juxtaposition" - there's no such thing. There's The Distributive Law and Terms, both of which use so-called "strong juxtaposition". Most calculators do too.
Shouldn’t strong juxtaposition be the precedent and the norm
It is. In fact it's the rules (The Distributive Law and Terms).
We should start saying weak juxtaposition is wrong
Maths teachers already DO say it's wrong.
This has been my devil’s advocate argument.
No, this is mostly a Maths teacher argument. You started off weak (saying its ambiguous), but then after that almost everything you said is actually correct - maybe you should be a Maths teacher. :-)
Not that anyone knows what RSS is
Actually there was quite a bit of discussion about it not long ago in my feed. I'm following at least one bot which is just boosting from an RSS feed.
Yep, I can attest to that! I used to play Minesweeper Adventure version. Then Microsoft decided to do a complete rewrite and literally ruined the game. It was way slower and way buggier, and on top of that they also lost all my progress. So, well done Microsoft - now instead of seeing more ads (which was undoubtedly why they did the rewrite) I now don't see ANY ads (because the game is just horrible now and not worth playing anymore, even if it didn't have any ads!).