[Blindmath] A Student's Question

[Daniel Gillen]

I think that if one is to use the decimal point followed by a letter from any of the supported alphabets, I would think one needs to place the appropriate letter indicator between the decimal point and the root of the letter. For example, if one is to write the string "1.p" using Nemeth conventions, the English/Roman letter indicator (dots 5-6) would go between the decimal point and the letter p (which would be differentiated from "1π"). Of course if one is to use a Greek letter after a decimal point (like "1.π"), there would be two dots 4-6 characters: the decimal point and then the Greek letter indicator before the "p" which forms the root of the π. Generally, though, I've not seen symbols other than numbers following decimal points in actual math notation, but it probably exists somewhere in the literature.

And on a similar but related topic, I should mention the other ambiguous uses of the dots 4-6 character that are only made clear by context. As someone who has encountered many Greek variables in my physics courses, it is obvious that the sequence "dots 4-6, dots 1-3" represents both the equals sign (=) and the lowercase Greek letter kappa (κ). Surrounding the sequence by spaces clarifies that it is an equals sign, and the string "3.k" would need to be written with the English letter indicator to distinguish it from "3κ" (or the ambiguously written "3=", for that matter).

Hope this helps.

Thank you,
Daniel

On Sep 29, 2016 2:15 PM, ALLEN PURVIN via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
> Hi, 
> A student asked me a Nemeth question and I do not know the answer. I am sure people here do, so thank you. 
> What is the difference between .p (decimal point, p) and pi (the Greek symbol) in Nemeth?  Aren't they both 4,6; 1,2,3,4? 
> I understand that in context, the distinction may be more clear.  But without? 
> Thank you, 
> - allen 
> _______________________________________________ 
> Blindmath mailing list 
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org 
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org 
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Blindmath: 
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/danielgillen%40rcn.com 
> BlindMath Gems can be found at <http://www.blindscience.org/blindmath-gems-home>