Shannon's Information Theory, Eigenvector, DeMorgan's Laws, etc. None of those n...

anrope · on Nov 28, 2011

Eigenvector isn't that bad, it's just not english:

"The prefix eigen- is adopted from the German word "eigen" for "own"[1] in the sense of a characteristic description" (from wikipedia)

I think Shannon's Information Theory is pretty fair too. It's about how much information is in a message.

Plus, Computer Science has it's own grievous names: A* search, B* search, B tree, B+ tree, B* tree. That always drove me nuts.

eru · on Nov 29, 2011

And lots of algorithms named after people. Which is fine (we have lots of things named after people in math, too), but not descriptive.

eru · on Nov 29, 2011

Most of math notation is optimized for allowing people talking to each other about abstract concepts to use blackboards and chalk as memory aids.

Mathematical notation is always supposed to be used in a context similar to literal programming.