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Dear Professors,

I am looking for any articles on the uses of the preposition "of" in mathematics. I once read in a teacher's edition of a pre-algebra textbook that suggested students should be taught, as early as possible, the many uses of the preposition "of" in mathematics, but I have been unable to find anything on this particular question/topic. Could anyone please try to help me find something? Or better still could anyone give me an outline of these uses?

Yours respectfully, Rob
1 
 Certainly using correct terminology is something one should do if one wants to acquire knowledge in any subject. I see students misusing terms all the time. I tend to assume people pick up language by osmosis the way I did, unless they're not interested in the subject. But I think mathematicians seldom think systematically about the lexicon in this way. They think about definitions of conceptsa but not so much about stuff like this. – Michael Hardy Dec 19 2010 at 20:45
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 There is the "of" in "off topic"... – darij grinberg Dec 19 2010 at 22:46
Dear Rob, people who vote to close questions have a limited array of choices to choose from; the fact that yours was closed as "not a real question" is mostly a reflection of this limitation, and you shouldn't take it personally. The reason your question was closed is that it doesn't fit within the purview of this site -- see the FAQ for more information: mathoverflow.net/faq – JBL Dec 20 2010 at 1:31
User skullpatrol edited this question to read "NOT A REAL QUESTION" in all caps, with several exclamation points. I don't approve of editing a question to make it look worse, so I have rolled it back. – David Speyer Dec 20 2010 at 1:53

locked by Scott Morrison♦ Dec 20 2010 at 2:08

closed as not a real question by Bill Johnson, Ryan Budney, Denis Serre, Willie Wong, Harry Gindi Dec 19 2010 at 21:11

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