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someone teach them LaTeX (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 (×).

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

The US government falls in the second category.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

there is a third case:

they are using a programming language

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Or me, doing math for school and being too lazy to type /cdot every time