How can I differentiate between decimal and dot product notation?

[Akshay_Anti]

I was helping my cousin with his homework when i came aacross this problem... I can easily differentiate b/w 3.5 ( three point five) and 3.5 ( three dot product five) when they come in different situations.. but there was this equation written which had the term 3.5. I interpreted it as decimal notation whereas it was for dot product multiplication... My question is that is there any different way of coming t know which notation is meant for which??

 

[Mark44]

I was helping my cousin with his homework when i came aacross this problem... I can easily differentiate b/w 3.5 ( three point five) and 3.5 ( three dot product five) when they come in different situations.. but there was this equation written which had the term 3.5. I interpreted it as decimal notation whereas it was for dot product multiplication... My question is that is there any different way of coming t know which notation is meant for which??

Using a period to indicate multiplication is a bad idea, especially where both factors are numerical digits. Many people use *, which is pretty much universally used on programming languages, as in 3 * 5.

Alternatively, if you can use LaTeX, there is the raised dot, as in $3 \cdot 5$. That symbol is represented by \cdot inside the LaTeX tags.