Definition talk:Real Interval

I've been wondering what others think about the double dots notation. Is this common enough in texts these days that the average person who is interested enough in math to be using proofwiki would recognize it? --Cynic-----(talk) 21:48, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say stick with using a comma. --Joe 21:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say whatever you use, make it obvious what it means. It's easy enough to get confused when reading $(x, y)$ to think it may mean a coordinate pair, but (once explained) the two-dots notation is unambiguous.

When you're writing a proof, it's usually obvious to a writer what all the symbols mean, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone coming upon a page from cold should have any "prior experience" of anything in the proof at all.

As for two-dots v. comma, if we are going to start using all the most up-to-date notation, then we're going to use two dots. If we're not going to be consistently using the most up-to-date notation, we should be able to continue to use, for example, $I_S$ for the identity mapping on the set $S$ rather than the horrible $1_S$, and carry on using $e$ for the identity of a monoid rather than the equally horrible $0$ or $1$, which are currently fashionable, apparently. --Matt Westwood 23:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I noticed something when I was going through this: Suppose $a, b \in \R$ comes before the ToC, which isn't good. Any thoughts on how to fix this? --Cynic-----(talk) 02:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

How's that? --Matt Westwood 11:33, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Much better, thanks! --Cynic-----(talk) 17:53, 27 December 2008 (UTC)