Timeline for how to formulate/name a specific simple math operation in a formal way?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 15, 2017 at 17:58 | comment | added | Andrew | The terms used in more advanced math courses are simplify and reduce. We simplify or reduce an equation by eliminating variables, but again you don't usually bother with trivial explanations. Instead you just cross things out or move things around and it's expected that others will follow along. It's more a Math thing than an English thing. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 17:32 | comment | added | TimR | When you do the same thing to both "sides" of an identity, the identity persists. Phrases like "cancel out" are a teacher's shooting-from-the-hip short-hand terminology when referring to the visual representation of the equation. This kind of language is used even before the students understand the concept of "identity". As Andrew says, "early in math education". | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 16:25 | comment | added | peter | It is a trade-off between giving a simple example and using too much jargon (I got critique on my previous post that I used too much jargon). But, on topic: it is not wrong to explain "subtract A from both sided of the equation'' by saying that you "cancel out" ''a'' in Eq. (1) ? | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 15:47 | comment | added | Andrew | This is much too simple an example for me to consider how to explain it in a "formal way". In a formal proof I think you wouldn't bother to explain the trivial steps like this because you can assume the reader knows what you are doing -- they are other mathematicians. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 15:31 | comment | added | peter | Thank you for your informative answer. So a formal way to say this would be: ''cancel out effects through ''a''? Since I think ''subtract A from both sided of the equation'' is not really formal right? | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 15:25 | history | answered | Andrew | CC BY-SA 3.0 |