When Ambiguity Is Your Friend

When Ambiguity Is Your Friend

In Algebra class recently, I warned the students against a certain ambiguous way of writing an algebraic expression. (Namely;   writing root(a) / b , with the divide sign not obviously longer than the root sign.) I said, “Writing it that way is ambiguous, and in mathematics, ambiguity is not your friend.” Then I was moved to add, “Ambiguity is your friend in love and in war. That’s because all’s fair in love and war, but mathematics has standards.”