The context of this discussion was graders marking people down on homework assignments, not published journals.
You’re right that it’s political. Changing any kind of convention is always political. [By the way, I believe you mean pedagogical rather than pedantic.]
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The use of octal or some other number notation system instead of decimal causes a dramatically larger conversion difficulty for unfamiliar readers than the use of τ does. It’s not a comparable distinction.
By your logic equating all such choices, no one should ever use a minority notation for anything, even if they think it has substantial benefits.
Thankfully, not everyone agrees, and sometimes our notation improves (A couple examples I particularly like are Knuth’s use of the Iverson Bracket in writing sums, and [] and {} notation for Stirling numbers.)
Comments
The context of this discussion was graders marking people down on homework assignments, not published journals.
You’re right that it’s political. Changing any kind of convention is always political. [By the way, I believe you mean pedagogical rather than pedantic.]
—
The use of octal or some other number notation system instead of decimal causes a dramatically larger conversion difficulty for unfamiliar readers than the use of τ does. It’s not a comparable distinction.
By your logic equating all such choices, no one should ever use a minority notation for anything, even if they think it has substantial benefits.
Thankfully, not everyone agrees, and sometimes our notation improves (A couple examples I particularly like are Knuth’s use of the Iverson Bracket in writing sums, and [] and {} notation for Stirling numbers.)