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For certain problems, suppression of a common entity or entry and making it understood by other means. For a lecture involving manipulation of some algebra (ternery ternary groups, maybe?) a form similar to matrix multiplication was used. Instead of spelling out the matrices with all the entries, those entries that were zero were omitted, giving a more eye-friendly appearence. I (and many others, I'm sure) use it for small incidence matrices which are not very dense; the symmetry and other relationships seem much more obvious without the clutter of zeroes. And this is just one example of many.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.09.13
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For certain problems, suppression of a common entity or entry and making it understood by other means. For a lecture involving manipulation of some algebra (ternery groups, maybe?) a form similar to matrix multiplication was used. Instead of spelling out the matrices with all the entries, those entries that were zero were omitted, giving a more eye-friendly appearence. I (and many others, I'm sure) use it for small incidence matrices which are not very dense; the symmetry and other relationships seem much more obvious without the clutter of zeroes. And this is just one example of many.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.09.13