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The letter ℘: name and origin? (2017)

(mathoverflow.net)
283 points IdealeZahlen | 2 comments | 14 Nov 24 16:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source
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wduquette ◴[14 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42139909[source]▶
I left college with a math degree and a profound antipathy for weird cursive symbols. The one that nearly killed me was the Greek "xi". I couldn't pronounce it, and I couldn't write it with any fluency, and in some of the classes I took it was everywhere.
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1. layer8 ◴[14 Nov 24 19:57 UTC] No.42140480[source]▶
Despite only having a CS degree, I was always especially fond of ξ due to its distinctiveness (and also didn’t have trouble writing or pronouncing it), moreso than letters like ν or ι, which are too close to v or i/j visually for my taste.
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2. anyfoo ◴[14 Nov 24 20:04 UTC] No.42140568[source]▶
I think iota is fine because it's missing the dot that an i has, but nu is terrible, yeah. In fact, in some fonts nu is exactly v: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nu_(letter)

But then a lot of capital greek letters at least are identical to latin letters in those fonts, so I guess you have to choose carefully anyway... and pick the proper font/handwriting if you absolutely have to use nu. (Hopefully you don't.)