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The letter ℘: name and origin? (2017)

(mathoverflow.net)
283 points IdealeZahlen | 6 comments | 14 Nov 24 16:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.84s | source | bottom
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non- ◴[14 Nov 24 18:26 UTC] No.42139412[source]▶
One thing I've always struggled with Math is keeping track of symbols I don't know the name of yet.

Googling for "Math squiggle that looks like a cursive P" is not a very elegant or convenient way of learning new symbol names.

I wish every proof or equation came with a little table that gave the English pronunciation and some context for each symbol used.

It would make it a lot easier to look up tutorials & ask questions.

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pflenker ◴[14 Nov 24 18:34 UTC] No.42139503[source]▶
I can relate. Ages ago, before Safe Search and search result tailored to one‘s history and preferences, I was trying to figure out how to write that big union symbol (∪) in LaTeX and googled for Big Cup LaTeX. I got _very_ different and unexpected results.
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1. vundercind ◴[14 Nov 24 19:37 UTC] No.42140252[source]▶
Googling guitar-related stuff is how I learned there’s such a thing as c-string women’s underwear & bathing suit bottoms, not just g-strings.

That was, briefly, a real WTF moment.

[edit] oh my god, of course that one didn’t come from searching guitar topics, that makes no sense given the standard tuning. I’m pretty sure I was googling strings in the C language when I hit that one, lol. I did probably accidentally land on “g string” after searching without thinking about what would obviously come up, when looking up guitar topics, and must have combined the two incidents in my memory.

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2. Archelaos ◴[14 Nov 24 20:43 UTC] No.42141002[source]▶
This reminds me of the time when searching for “c string” would probably result in “The C Programming Language” at number 1.
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3. rahkiin ◴[14 Nov 24 21:03 UTC] No.42141189[source]▶
That’s what I get right now
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4. eesmith ◴[14 Nov 24 21:07 UTC] No.42141229[source]▶
Back in the mid-1990s I extracted a small part of the GNU C++ String library into a small package, which I called "GString".

I had no idea about the garment.

5. scubbo ◴[14 Nov 24 21:21 UTC] No.42141352[source]▶
Haha - my favourite WTF Googling moment was when, as a callow youth first setting out in learning Javascript and HTML, I Googled "How to get head"
6. dhosek ◴[14 Nov 24 23:04 UTC] No.42142201{3}[source]▶
In the early days of the internet, searching for things like C++ was really challenging because none of the first generation search engines could search for that particular string.