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The letter ℘: name and origin? (2017)

(mathoverflow.net)
283 points IdealeZahlen | 1 comments | 14 Nov 24 16:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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Symbiote ◴[14 Nov 24 19:40 UTC] No.42140285[source]▶
The "unicode" program (in Ubuntu's package repository) gives the Unicode entry for any character:

  $ unicode ℘
  U+2118 SCRIPT CAPITAL P
  UTF-8: e2 84 98 UTF-16BE: 2118 Decimal: ℘ Octal: \020430
  ℘
  Category: Sm (Symbol, Math); East Asian width: N (neutral)
  Unicode block: 2100..214F; Letterlike Symbols
  Bidi: ON (Other Neutrals)
  Age: Assigned as of Unicode 1.1.0 (June, 1993)
Or you can ask Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%e2%84%98 (manually URL-escaped for HN)
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1. anyfoo ◴[14 Nov 24 19:55 UTC] No.42140466[source]▶
That assumes you are in a position of being able to paste the character (and as unicode), which is not always the case.