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submitted 3 months ago by BB84@mander.xyz to c/memes@lemmy.ml

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A microblog post by @kareem_carr saying "as soon as i saw they were using asterisks for multiplication symbols, i knew we were in trouble", with an image from the "Office of the United States Trade Representative (Executive Office of the President)" showing the mathematical formula $\Delta \tau_i = \frac{x_i - m_i}{\varepsilon * \varphi * m_i}$. The formula show asterisks (*) instead of multiplication signs (×).

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[-] WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago

I don't get the significance. How should the formula be represented?

[-] BB84@mander.xyz 39 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The only times anyone would use the asterisk as multiplication symbol are

they are doing some fancy math and it's not the same kind of number multiplication we're familiar with
they are on a computer, the keyboard does not have a (×) key, and they don't know how to typeset it (\times in LaTex), so they just use the asterisk instead

The US government falls in the second category.