Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp@mathstodon.xyz

@andrewt @chalkdustmag @mscroggs @Pecnut no, but the message inside refers to something which took place this year

@chalkdustmag @mscroggs @Pecnut thanks for the Christmas card! Hopefully it hadn't been sitting in my pigeonhole for too long

@loke not in my experience

I've just updated mathstodon.xyz to v2.6.5. Basically no fun new features, just some tiny bug fixes from the look of it.

@cg505 wrong order: everyone's mad, so this guy grabbed a giant hammer. It's an important part of our constitution (still gloriously unwritten, so we are Calvinball: The Country)

Have just been notified I have 1.5GB of my data allowance left, and it renews tomorrow. I also have 5 hours until my flight...

@pkra desmos uses mathquill, doesn't it? I'd imagine they'll want to make some improvements eventually

@ccppurcell and the intro para says 'sequences of elements', so I think I'll go with 'sequences'.
Thanks for the link!

@mathr the larger blisters might be for people with poor eyesight or motor control?

@pkra I didn't know you had maths A level!
Yes, 'doing sums' is often used to mean any calculation.

@amiloradovsky yeah, I'm not interested in those generalisations for the thing I'm working on

@amiloradovsky yeah, I wanted to know: in something like `fold f x`, what kind of thing is x? The haskell wiki says "a data structure", which is far too broad. I'm thinking of an ordered set, so 'sequence' is the best I can come up with

@amiloradovsky you're naming the process, and I want a name for the terms, considered together

@pkra yeah, that's unfortunate, because it's such an overloaded term. If I say 'products', then a large portion of my readers will assume it doesn't include sums

@loke in any other case, yes, but I'm talking about the form of the thing here, so you don't actually apply the operation

@cpsdqs can't work on an empty stomach

A 'sum' is a sequence of terms joined by addition.
A 'product' is a sequence of terms joined by multiplication.
Is there a general term for terms joined by a general associative operation, that mathematicians would know? Is it 'sequence'?
In Haskell this would be implemented as a fold, but what do you call the thing it acts on? 'Iterable' and 'Enumerable' are too computer-sciencey.
It's possible this question has no good answer.