Timeline for In general... (convention in mathematical papers)
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 15, 2010 at 13:26 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by S. Carnahan♦ | ||
| Oct 15, 2010 at 9:41 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | It's not as if there isn't mathematical predecent for using "general" this way, e.g. in the phrase "in general position." | |
| Oct 15, 2010 at 9:36 | answer | added | Andrew Stacey | timeline score: 8 | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 19:26 | answer | added | Aaron Meyerowitz | timeline score: 0 | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 19:24 | comment | added | Theo Johnson-Freyd | With @Andrew D. King, I think that you're missing another option: 1') For most $x$, $\neg p(x)$. Indeed, that's how I read your sentence 1. As for sentence 2, I read it as: 2') If you drop some assumption, then $\exists x : \neg p(x)$. | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 19:18 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | I agree with Andrew on usage; I almost second Deane -- using these expressions is fine, provided that they are immediately followed by an illuminating example of what you mean. Otherwise, don't bother, you're only exasperating your readership. | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 19:10 | comment | added | Deane Yang | I think the phrase "in general" is to be avoided. | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 18:43 | history | edited | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 2 characters in body
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| Oct 14, 2010 at 18:25 | comment | added | Andrew D. King | I would use "this is not true in general" to mean that it doesn't always hold. I would use "this is in general not true" to mean the same, but with the added suggestion that it tends not to be the case for your "average" non-degenerate situation. In terms of strict logical implication, I consider them to mean the same thing. | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 18:23 | comment | added | Willie Wong | I think I would parse both the 1st and 2nd phrases the same way, a la JBL's comment above mine. I would imagine the phrase preceding either of those to be "p is true given condition Y". In this case in particular, your interpretation (1) makes no sense, since $\exists Y: p(Y)$. | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 18:01 | comment | added | JBL | Also, I think common usage is that "true in general" means "for all [whatever], [thing] is true" while "false in general" means "not (true in general)." | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 17:58 | comment | added | Mariano Suárez-Álvarez |
You probably wanted to use \neg instead of \not.
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| Oct 14, 2010 at 17:58 | comment | added | JBL | Perhaps you're looking for \neg: $\neg$ | |
| Oct 14, 2010 at 17:54 | history | asked | Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.5 |