Math Symbol Frequencies

a year ago

Raúl Rojas’s book 'The Language of Mathematics: The Stories behind the Symbols' explores the history and standardization of mathematical symbols.
The book includes a table showing the frequencies of the most-used symbols from arXiv math papers and engineering textbooks.
The table was originally developed for mathematical handwriting recognition software, similar to Apple's Math Notes.
The author found anomalies in the table, such as duplicate entries and unclear symbols represented by boxes.
The anomalies were traced back to a master's thesis by Clare M. So and a subsequent paper by Stephen M. Watt.
The books analyzed in Watt's paper were math books aimed at engineers, not representative of engineering publications.
The author questions the inclusion of punctuation marks like commas and periods in the list of mathematical operators.
The post reflects on how interesting and odd findings can lead to deep dives into tangential topics.

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