While TeX has its merits and its fans, in many ways its presence has slowed progress toward a better math UI. Its low price (free) and ubiquity has aided its adoption, but its nature is such that it is difficult to improve. To make matters worse, its creator, Don Knuth, dictated that the TeX name can only be applied to systems that process TeX as defined when it was invented. In other words, any attempts to improve TeX can’t be called TeX!

Unfortunately, most of the market’s attention on new technologies, user interfaces, mobile devices, etc. does not include mathematics. I do believe this will happen in time. When it does, its capabilities will be far beyond those of paper and pencil. Our digital math facilities just need time to mature.

I will admit that for the right student, higher level math on the computer can be rewarding. But, often, pen and paper is just more efficient and authentic – especially as geometry goes (we don’t measure ANYTHING on a COMPUTER with a protractor…) I believe at least one part of the story is that computer based learning often gets support because it makes data collection and assessment easier for TEACHERS…

-end rant here-

Then we got “T9 Word” and things got a little better. Then we got QWERTY keypads and things got easier still.

Can’t we be optimistic that things will get better for us math nerds in re: using computers to communicate?

But why is this an either-or situation? If we agree that function notation is worth learning anyway, it doesn’t seem impossible for a kid to know that “sqrt(2)” means the same thing as what I write down as radical-sign-with-a-two-inside.

I was in the faculty lounge at Stonybrook last week. Two members of the faculty were conferring and they were drawing on the chalkboard not because computers weren’t readily available (they were) and not because the profs didn’t know how to use them (I’m sure they did) but because it wasn’t the easiest, most natural medium for expression.

I agree that knowing more ways to express oneself (either in math or in language) is a good thing. It’s also an investment, though. There are costs and benefits. I’m open to arguments that the benefits outweigh the costs but I don’t see it in this thread.

However, programming and functional expressions are not really mathematics. Most programming languages (and the ones mentioned in this thread) are algorithmic and imperative whereas standard math notation is declarative. For example, = in most programming languages is an assignment operation. This is not the same as = in mathematical notation which declares both sides as having a certain relationship, usually numerical equality but not always.

Programming languages and math notation are very different kinds of languages because they describe quite different things.