Talk:Vinculum (symbol)

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Wow. Vinculums are everywhere! More places than was previously indicated in this article, and so I changed it.

Vincula, not vinculums. :P It's a latin word, you see. (I'm just saying, because when I read that, I actually had to pause for a second or two to parse "vinculums" (I didn't immediately see that you intended it to be the plural of vinculum, but I'm strange like that) ) S. Morrow 23:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Reality check: Merriam-Webster accepts both vinculums and vincula.
—Herbee 00:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


The citation at the bottom of this page - Eric W. Weisstein, Vinculum at MathWorld. - has no reference to vinculum also denoting the line between the numerator & denominator of a fraction. In the Wikipedia article on fractions these lines are referred to as vinculum. Is Weisstein correct that this line, aka "fraction bar", is in fact NOT a vinculum? I sure don't know which use is correct (though I'd suspect Weisstein right, huh.) Depending on which is, for consistency either the Wikipedia article on fractions or the article on vinculum ought to be changed . [User:Chris Weller] May 7, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.48.92 (talk) 23:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Overline

Vinculum may be displayed using Template:Overline.  E. g. AB or √2+x. — Monedula 1 July 2005 08:05 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional usage

In the Star Trek universe, a Vinculum is the computer core aboard a Borg ship which interlinks all the Borg aboard and passes tasks to appropriate drones. Each Vinculum functions as one node in the Borg collective network. It is likely the name is derived from the Latin word as well.

The term Vinculum was also used in the video game Killer7 to refer to a set of gates. These Vinculum Gates were used to link the present situation experienced by Garcian Smith/Emir Parkreiner to the memories of his past, which are represented as chapters thoughout the rest of the game.

I removed the preceding definitions, as they have nothing to do with the topic of this article. I don't think they're notable enough to deserve their own articles complete with disambiguation, so I'll let them die here. Melchoir 06:51, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Of course theyre not important enough to have their own articles, thats why they are minor sidenotes. In the name of Harman.....

[edit] Bracket precedence

From my high-school mathematics, I remember that the vinculum is used to 'bracket' parts of a mathematical expression. This is the order of precendence for evaluating a mathematical expression which had multiple types of 'brackets' (from memory):

  1. Vinculum
  2. Parentheses ()
  3. Brackets []
  4. Braces {}

That is, the vinculum binds more tightly than any of the other brackets, and braces are the least binding.

VedLuap 04:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That makes no sense. √2×(3+5) can mean only one thing, and your suggestion gets us nowhere. Nesting dictates the order of evaluation with brackets.
On the other hand, it's a useful observation that the vinculum is a tool to group symbols, similar to the way brackets are used. The article should probably mention this.
—Herbee 00:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Antiparticles

Similarly, in particle physics, antimatter particles get vinculated, for example, if we use β to represent an electron then we can use β to be a positron, the antiparticle of the electron.

Bad example. (Anti)leptons are usually identified by their electric charge, as in e− and e+ for electron and positron. Antibaryons are indicated with a vinculum, however. I rewrote the example accordingly.
—Herbee 23:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)