Re: Why blackletter letters?

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 01:21:28PM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> On 12/09/13 11:26, Johan Winge wrote:
> >On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 20:29:51 +0200, Hans Aberg
> ><haberg-1_at_telia.com> wrote:
> >
> >>... The symbol for the empty set ∅ is originally a Greek letter
> >>phi ϕ, ans some use the latter.
> >
> >According to the autobiography of André Weil, quoted at
> >http://jeff560.tripod.com/set.html, the empty set symbol ∅ was
> >inspired by the Scandinavian Ø, and would then have nothing to do
> >with the Greek phi, except for a superficial resemblance. I'm
> >aware that some mathematician indeed do use Φ/φ, supposedly due to
> >this misconception and/or lacking coverage in fonts and/or
> >carelessness, but I find it terribly annoying. Really, it is no
> >more correct than using ß in lieu of β.
> >
> >-- Johan Winge
> >
> >
>
> Do some mathematicians _really_ use Φ/φ instead of ∅, or does it
> just look like they're doing so?

Seems so: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/227548

Also, when I went to school we were taught that phi denotes a group of
nothing, not sure if that was supposed to be the empty set (we were
taught math in Arabic, so not sure how that translates into English).

Regards,
Khaled
Received on Thu Sep 12 2013 - 10:47:27 CDT