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mathwonk
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Just to play devil's advocate, isn't any textbook in math essentially a list of FAQ's with answers? I suspect people who ask these FAQ's just do not read.
mathwonk said:I disagree that it should be perfectly clear to anyone that the empty set has only one ordering. it was not clear to me for example. it seems to boil down to the rather odd fact (for beginners) that the empty set has exactly one subset.
mathwonk said:i agree with Gokul that beginners find math language daunting. if you have ever read one of my posts you will note i seldom use standard math language in talking to beginners, or even to non beginners, but try to use everyday common sense language.
i also agree with Gokul that beginners find examples more helpful than theory, but admit i am frequently too lazy to provide them.
Gokul43201 said:Is this idea going somewhere or has it already fallen by the wayside ?
Mentors ?
Also, the conversation between matt and a math beginner here is revealing :
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=43825
Beginners seem to find the language daunting.
This should be perfectly clear : (I quote from matt) "plus there is only one ordering of the empty set - an ordering of a set of n elements being all the ways of picking the n objects out in turn (without replacement). the set with no elements in is the empty set, there is only one way to pick out elements to get a set with no elements in it." yet it clearly isn't.
Perhaps the use of a little verbosity, and a sprinkling of examples may get the point across to a beginner ?
Gokul43201 said:Okay. Perhaps it is more intuititve that C(n,0) = 1 (or is it not) ? Could that be used instead to explain why 0!=1 works ?
Zurtex said:It all looks good to me, I think a general FAQ will save a lot of time. Although it will need to include as many methods as possible on how to prove something and demonstrate them clearly enough for anyone to understand
mathwonk said:I think they shunned her though.