Math strives to minimize ambiguity, which other fields don't do as much. Non-math fields tend to reuse regular words as jargon (i.e. with specificity of meaning that may fly over the laymen's heads). Social sciences and humanities are most notorious for this, often resulting in non-practitioners not realizing they are out of their depth because they are not looking at symbols from non-Roman alphabets.

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breezybottom 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's something only someone who's never studied advanced math could say. Math notation and jargon can be extremely ambiguous and overloaded. "Normal" has about 20 different meanings.

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math_dandy 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Certainly overloaded but rarely ambiguous. Context will determine which notion of “normal” applies.

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breezybottom 10 hours ago | parent [-]

"Context dependent" is basically the definition of ambiguity.

	▲	chongli 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, I'd say ambiguous means "context dependent" and the context is unclear. Pronouns like you/me/he/she/they/them are context dependent in everyday English writing but they're only ambiguous when the context is unclear, otherwise most people have no trouble dealing with them at all!
	▲	math_dandy 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I guess what I’m saying is that since there’s always a context, ambiguity stemming from uninspired naming is never an issue in practice.

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overfeed 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Strives to minimize =/= completely eliminates

	▲	breezybottom 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I haven't seen much of this "striving". Notation use is largely passed down from instructor to student, and there isn't much interest in the mathematical community to standardize.

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johnfn 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Non-math fields tend to reuse regular words as jargon

Isn’t this the field with a “closed” “set”, an “open” “set”, oh and also a “clopen” “set” for some reason?