A microblog post by @kareem_carr saying “as soon as i saw they were using asterisks for multiplication symbols, i knew we were in trouble”, with an image from the “Office of the United States Trade Representative (Executive Office of the President)” showing the mathematical formula $\Delta \tau_i = \frac{x_i - m_i}{\varepsilon * \varphi * m_i}$. The formula show asterisks (*) instead of multiplication signs (×).
I don’t get the significance. How should the formula be represented?
Most mathematicians, engineers, and scientists don’t use the asterisk symbol for multiplication. Most don’t write any symbol as it’s implicit. If they do use a symbol they would use a dot or x symbol (though never an actual x). In mathematics, the asterisk is mostly only used to represent convolutions.
Most common:
abc
Less common:
a • b • c
a × b × c
Never:
a * b * c
While to most people this doesn’t really matter (and should feel free using * for multiplication). It shows someone with minimal formal experience in mathematics using this formula
I don’t know, to me a * b * c is basically just the exact same as a • b • c but just easier to type on a computer. If you were writing it down on paper or a black board they would probably use dots. Coding often uses * because who wants to type in those dots would be a pain in the ass and the * basically looks the closest to a dot.
The only times anyone would use the asterisk as multiplication symbol are
\timesin LaTex), so they just use the asterisk insteadThe US government falls in the second category.
Just guessing but real mathematicians would know how to properly build the formula. I guess in higher maths we use the ‘x’ rather than ‘*’.
Not a big deal but may show that the people doing it have no idea what they are doing.
what baffles me is they managed to get all those other symbols but not the multiplication? So weird. Kinda makes me think they used ai to generate this and the ai just had them all next to eachother so the human added asterisks manually for some reason.
With the × Unicode character: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_sign
Most of the time in math, you just put the symbols you want to multiply without anything between them, the multiplication is implicit, or if you really want to make it explicit, you put a dot or a cross. The only time you would use an * is when programming.
There really isn’t any. It’s just a huge nitpick. * is commonly used for multiplication, especially in online contexts in order to avoid confusing multiplication with the letter x when wider symbols aren’t available.