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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] 28 points 1 week ago

When I went to college the dot was used for the dot product (scalar product) of two vectors while the cross was used for the cross product (vector product) of two vectors.

Since in this case numbers (read: one-dimensional vectors) are multiplied, the dot product is used, which should be denoted by a dot.

(But really, if I were to write a formula in Latex I would just use the * symbol, too.)