[eeps] : Proposal for /\ and \/ operators

Raimo Niskanen raimo+eeps@REDACTED
Thu Feb 26 11:12:18 CET 2009


On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:55:34AM +0100, Pierpaolo Bernardi wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Raimo Niskanen <
> raimo+eeps@REDACTED <raimo%2Beeps@REDACTED>> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Can you explain to a non-mathematician (me) why you have defined
> > (E1 /\ E2) as min(E1, E2) and
> > (E1 \/ E2) as max(E1, E2). To me it seems counterintuitive
> > since /\ looks like a mountain hence max
> > and \/ looks like a valley hence min.
> > And I do not want to fully understand Lattice theory
> > to understand which operator is which. I am a simple programmer.
> 
> 
> It's not ROK's invention it's common mathematical usage (derived from
> Boolean algebra, I think).
> 
> The symbol  \/ derives from the letter V, abbreviation of "vel" (= or in
> latin).
> 
> I'm not sure where /\ comes from (maybe an inverted V?)

Yes I am quite familiar with /\ being AND and \/ being OR.
That is in the basic math courses at University.

But I can not make the connection /\ being AND being MIN,
\/ being OR being MAX. To me /\ is simply a top i.e MAX,
\/ is a bottom i.e MIN.

> 
> Cheers
> P.

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-- 

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB



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