Bob wrote a limerick on OEDILF about "abscissa" and I made these suggestions:

The Cartesian plane's in directions
That allow for binomial connections

Now, I was assumeing the "binomial" connections to be the "abscissa" and the "ordinate."

Bob doesn't think it works, and neither does my mathematically inclined husband. Why? When I look up "binomial," it can mean "consisting of or relating to two names or terms" (i.e., the "abscissa" and "ordinate.")

And indeed it can mean that - in regular English. The problem is that here we have a limerick dealing with a mathematical term and in mathematics "binomial" has a very specific meaning - an algebraic expression consisting of two terms. It isn't a word a mathematician would use to describe the cartesian plane.

For example the expresion
x(squared)+2xy+y(squared)
can be expressed as the product of two binomials (x+y)*(x+y)

Bob, I am aware of the mathematical term. I just thought a quick author's note would suffice on which definition you were using.

It's not a big deal, of course. I just wondered if my understanding of the non-math definition of binomial is correct. As I said, my husband doesn't think so.

Normally yes. The problem arises because this limerick is specifically about another mathematical term and it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that if we are defining one mathematical term in terms of another then that too is being used in its mathematical sense.
Incidentally I'd say that the mathematical use of binomial is far more common than the nonmathematical use.

Have you looked at the limerick in question since Carol made a suggestion for a rewrite. I've modified her suggestion slightly but would value your opinion on the current version.

The only non-math binomial I know of is the linguistics term, "irreversible binomials". It's a kind of collocation that was studied in depth by Yakov Malkiel. These are phrases consisting of two nouns (either substantive or adjective) connected by a conjunction which have become so fixed, that the nouns cannot be reversed without seeming strange: e.g., kith and kin, ham and eggs, thick and thin, etc.

See Y. Malkiel, "Studies in Irreversible Binomials" in Lingua VIII, 2 (May 1959); reprinted in his Essays on Linguistic Themes.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
Incidentally I'd say that the mathematical use of binomial is far more common than the nonmathematical use.

Except, perhaps, for the binomial nomenclature used by taxonomists. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it, though I think it does have an error or two.

Tinman

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

The Binomial Theorem describes (a+b)^N, where a and b are the nomials. Having a mathematics degree, the limerick is troublesome. I strained to find the connection between Cartesian and binomial, and it just isn't there. It is definitely misleading, and should absolutely be changed. I don't see how an author's note would suffice, since as previously stated, binomial is rare outside of mathematics, except in taxonomy.

This seems like a clear case of scrapping the author's preferred word for clarity's sake.

It was Bob's limerick, and that rewrite that I posted was mine. Okay...I was wrong. Don't worry, Sean, Bob did not accept my rewrite, and he has changed it per someone else's suggestion.

I was going by the dictionary definition, which, to me, made perfect sense in that use...as long as an author note explained the use of "binomial." Apparently my reading of the dictionary is incorrect.

Or what the dictionary says is an insufficient guide to usage. This is a word that has two common contexts, with precise meanings in both, and is extremely rare outside those. (I hadn't even heard of the linguistic term.) I don't know how a dictionary would mark that. They mark words as (rare), (obs.) etc., or particular senses, but I can't recall anything where the word is marked (rare) but there's an override saying it's normal in the following contexts.

I agree the non-mathematical sense is impossible in a mathematical context. As would be many other words: group, for example. Anywhere in mathematics, group means precisely one thing and you just can't use it in its everyday sense.