Notation
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The term notation can be used in several contexts. Commonly, "notation" refers to the typographical conventions or rules of symbol usage that are followed, e.g., within a book or article. Notation may refer to notation systems, meaning an interpreted system of tokens having a syntax and semantics.
- Examples of this typographical conventions include
- Infix notation for representing calculations in an almost linguistic format, such as a+b-c
- Prefix notation or Polish notation, which places the operator before the operands, such as + a b
- Postfix notation or reverse Polish notation, which places the operator after the operands, such as a b +
- Numeral systems, notation for writing numbers, including
- Positional notation, which made writing numbers more systematic than a tally method like Roman numerals
- binary notation, a positional notation in base two
- decimal notation, a positional notation in base ten
- scientific notation for expressing large and small numbers
- See also Math symbols - for general tokens and their definitions.
- Examples of notation systems
- In mathematics, mathematical notation is used to represent mathematical ideas, such as:
- Conway's chained arrow, Knuth's up-arrow notation and Steinhaus polygon notation are systems to iterate exponentiation, for representing veryveryvery large numbers.
- Cartesian Coordinate System, for representing position and other spatial concepts in analytic geometry
- Leibnitz notation is the standard representation for Calculus
- Big O notation, used for example in analysis to represent less significant elements of an expression, to indicate that they will be neglected
- Z notation - a formal notation for specifying objects using Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and first-order predicate logic
- In physics physics notation:
- In quantum mechanics, Dirac's Bra-ket notation is another representation of probability amplititudes
- In general relativity, for example, Tensor notation is a general way to represent a gravitational field
- In chemistry, the Lewis notation denotes chemical bonds
- Musical notation - to represent music in a musical composition
- Dance notation - to document various forms of is used to dance movement such as Labanotation, Benesh Notation, and Eshkol-Wachman notation.