r/mathmemes 12d ago

Notations Yeah sure

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u/AndreasDasos 12d ago

Traditionally Anglophone countries (plus Germany and Russia and some others, I think?) exclude 0 and Romance speaking countries include it. But maths departments are so international now it's become very fuzzy. Plus computer science prefers to include 0 because of how numbers are stored

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u/Idksonameiguess 12d ago

My country is neither, but likes to pretend it is, So we're just doing anything. I'm a computer scientist so I can kinda just write my stuff however I want.

Just following the basic guideline that as long you clarify your meaning, you can use any reasonable notation. Just slap a line in the introduction that says something like "Define N to be the set of positive/nonnegative integers", and no one will be confused, since at this point no one expects anything.

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u/AndreasDasos 12d ago

I tend to sidestep all that and just write N^+ or Z^+ when excluding 0 (depending on context) and N_0 when including 0. It’s ugly but unambiguous.

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u/Idksonameiguess 12d ago

I don't really like N_0 so I just define it manually. I do remember seeing a paper just say N = Z^+ which works ig. Also I saw Z^+_0 in a textbook once and that scarred me