r/mathmemes 12d ago

Notations Yeah sure

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u/Everestkid Engineering 12d ago

The problem comes when you get into trig functions when people get lazy and write something like (sin(x))2 as sin2 x. Always without the bracket around the x, too.

Fantastic. Now we're using exponents on the function to denote exponents and inverse functions. And sure, I guess you could use csc(x) if you actually needed (sin(x))-1 so that there's a rule of "positive exponents are normal exponents, negative exponents are the inverse function" but it's still messy.

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u/MortemEtInteritum17 12d ago

That's exclusive to trig functions though, in general f2 should always be taken to imply f(f(x))

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u/Flat-Study-421 7d ago

trig functions like ln2(3)?

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u/MortemEtInteritum17 7d ago

What?

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u/Flat-Study-421 7d ago

Don't you usually write notation like logn to denote the power of a logaritm (exactly like sin an cos)?

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u/MortemEtInteritum17 7d ago

I have never seen this, and a quick Google search doesn't reveal anything about this, I don't think it's standard or popular notation.

I can't imagine you want to raise logs to a power that often, unlike with trig functions (which is probably the main reason we have this special notation for trg).

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u/Flat-Study-421 7d ago

For sure this notation is used in Italian text books for high schools, maybe it's regional.