> > Furthermore, in English, such factors as the homonym problem can cause ambiguity

> In Italian,too. Usually the correct interpretation depends on the context the word is expressed in. For example, the Italian for "root" ("radice") may mean a lot of things:
> - the roots of a tree;
> - a mathematical expression, as in 'squared root';
> - in anatomy, the part that binds a tooth to its gum;
> - the bare origins of something (a genealogy, an event, a problem,...)

That's interesting. The English "root" has all of the same meanings! /Plus/, it can be:
- a verb meaning approximately "to search" (ie. you can "root around" for something you lost);
- the base or support of a structure (the part of a stand of hair that attaches to your head is the "root" of the hair, for example);
- some musical definition; dictionary.com says "The note from which a chord is built," but I don't know enough about music to know what that means.
- And a couple of other things, but they're all related to stuff already mentioned.

> > - Any interval of numbers [a, b] on a number line.

> We use 'I' also for open intervals like (a,b), (a, +infinite), (-infinite, b).

...as well as any half-open interval, [a, +infinite), [a,b). But that's just complicating things.

> > Plus I probably forgot some.

> An electric current.

/That/ was the one I was trying to remember when I wrote this post! I /knew/ there was something in electricity and power that had the symbol "I", but I couldn't remember exactly what it was.

> It's always the context that rules...

I got the idea for this post when in math class the other day, we were talking about Reimann sums. Reimann sums are basically sums of approximations of areas under a curve -- you can use them to approximate integrals, or (by taking a limit) to derive the fundamental theorem of calculus. In any event, the symbol for a Reimann sum is "R".

While I was copying some notes off of another board, my math professor defined a quantity I* and said that I* was a part of a Reimann sum (I* is a member of R). But I got around to copying that part of the notes, I thought it meant that I* was a real number (the symbol for the set of real numbers is also "R"), and I couldn't for a few moments figure out how the professor had managed to derive the next couple of lines. Sometimes context doesn't help as much as it ought to!

(Well, actually, the symbol for the set of real numbers is an R with a line through it and the symbol for a Reimann sum is a script R, but even though my professor has decent handwriting, it's sometimes difficult to tell them apart.)

...a few moments later, the professor defined /another/ quantity (a special type of Reimann sum called the Right Reimann Sum) as latin-R. Yippee.

> AP.

-SB