• affiliate@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    i was in a group call with 6 mathematicians, and it came time to order our names in the paper we were writing. in math papers, the names are always ordered alphabetically. we had to pull up a picture of the alphabet because none of us could remember which way the letters are ordered.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      memorizing the order of the alphabet would take precious real estate that could instead hold a couple more digits of pi

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      You guys are mathematicians not letterematicians.

      Also, I’m doing engineering shit and I still need to count using my fingers when calculating something on a multiplication table

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        As a math guy, obviously the order of the letters is: x, y, z, a, b, c, then the rest of them in whatever order I currently feel like.

        As a CS guy, obviously the order is sort( [ set of all letters ] ).

      • affiliate@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        exactly!

        and i am always in favor of counting with fingers. we were given them for a reason, might as well make the most of them. counting is hard enough as it is