• cobysev@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The way I was taught growing up, brackets are [these]. Parenthesis are (these).

    Yes, technically the latter are also brackets. But they can also be called parenthesis, whereas the former is exclusively a bracket. So we were taught to call them separate words to differentiate while doing equations.

    • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m a theoretical physics grad student and a night school maths teacher, I have never heard this distinction. People in academia around me call them round and square brackets.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        It’s a US vs UK (and probably others) distinction. The ( ) are almost never called brackets in the US, unless it’s a regional thing I’m not aware of. Also the [ ] didn’t get used in any math classes I was in the US up through calculus except for matrices.

        • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Interesting! Nobody at my institute is a native English speaker. They’re from several European and some Asian and south American countries.

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Yeah, but as an adult it depends entirely on whether you’re in an industry or hobby that requires that level of bracket nuance/exponents.

      Most of us are just trying to remember the basics.