Math Symbol Frequencies
20 tosh 8 6/7/2025, 8:33:38 PM leancrew.com ↗
Comments (8)
layer8 · 2h ago
It seems weird that ∋ would be the sixth-most frequent symbol, while ∈ doesn't figure at all.
mkl · 1h ago
Agreed. Even stranger to me is @ as the fourth most common operator, supposedly more common than +. The whole thing seems dubious.
layer8 · 1h ago
I would suspect that the @ comes from author email addresses. It's not entirely wrong to call that an operator. ;)
mmooss · 37m ago
Do papers tend to have more email addresses or more plus signs? I'd expect the latter, by a lot.
VonTum · 2h ago
I had a bit of a chuckle that apparently 5 out of 50000 opening "(" parentheses weren't closed, but then I saw that 2 out of 12000 "]" brackets weren't opened! What criminal is using these standalone?
gfaure · 1h ago
There is the normal notation for half-open ranges, which would lead to unbalanced brackets.
rphln · 2h ago
Mixing them should be relatively common when denoting intervals, as in "(a, b]" or "[a, b)", so that'd be one cause for being unbalanced. But even so, the math on their usage still doesn't add up.
orlp · 1h ago
You won't like bra-ket notation then :)