Ehh, among American academic mathematicians, including 0 is the fringe position. It’s not a “debate,” it’s just a different convention. There are numerous ISO standards which would be highly unusual in American academia.
Comment on Zero to hero
expr@programming.dev 6 months ago
I just found out about this debate and it’s patently absurd. The ISO 80000-2 standard defines ℕ as including 0 and it’s foundational in basically all of mathematics and computer science. Excluding 0 is a fringe position and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
xkforce@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The US is one of 3 countries on the planet that still stubbornly primarily uses imperial units. “The US doesn’t do it that way” isn’t a great argument for not adopting a standard.
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I’m an American mathematician, and I’ve never experienced a situation where 0 being an element of the Naturals was called out. It’s less ubiquitous than I’d like it to be, but at worst they’re considered equally viable conversations of notation or else undecided.
I’ve always used N to indicate the naturals including 0, and that’s what was taught to me in my foundations class.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
Of course they’re considered equally viable conventions, it’s just that one is prevalent among Americans and the other isn’t.
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I think you’re using a fringe definition of the word “fringe”.
holomorphic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I have yet to meet a single logician, american or otherwise, who would use the definition without 0.
That said, it seems to depend on the field. I think I’ve had this discussion with a friend working in analysis.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
I did say mathematician, not logician.
holomorphic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Logicians are mathematicians. Well, most of them.
pooberbee@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
This isn’t strictly true. I went to school for math in America, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a zero-exclusive definition of the natural numbers.
kogasa@programming.dev 6 months ago
It is true.
RandomWalker@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I could be completely wrong, but I doubt any of my (US) professors would reference an ISO definition, and may not even know it exists. Mathematicians in my experience are far less concerned about the terminology or symbols used to describe something as long as they’re clearly defined. In fact, they’ll probably make up their own symbology just because it’s slightly more convenient for their proof.
doctordevice@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
My experience (bachelor’s in math and physics, but I went into physics) is that if you want to be clear about including zero or not you add a subscript to specify. For non-negative integers you add a subscript zero (N_0). For strictly positive natural numbers you can either do N_1 or N^(+).
Emmie@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I hate those guys. I had one prof at uni and he reinvented every possible symbol and everything was so his own. It was a pain in the ass to learn from external material.
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I feel so thoroughly called out RN.
gens@programming.dev 6 months ago
From what i understand, you can pay iso to standardise anything. So it’s only useful for interoperability.
KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Can I pay them to make my dick length the ISO standard?
gens@programming.dev 6 months ago
I feel they have an image to maintain, but i also feel they would sell out for enough money. So… tell me if you make it.
expr@programming.dev 6 months ago
Yeah, interoperability. Like every software implementation of natural numbers that include 0.
WldFyre@lemm.ee 6 months ago
How programmers utilize something doesn’t mean it’s the mathematical standard, idk why ISO would be a reference for this at all
xkforce@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah dont do that.