Month: August 2018

Type inference for lazy LaTeXing

I am doing some work with asymptotic expansions of the form

h = h^{(0)} + \epsilon h^{(1)} + O(\epsilon^2)

and I don’t care about second-order terms. The parentheses are there to indicate that these are term labels, not powers. But actually, there’s no need to have them, because if I ever need to raise something to the zeroth power, I can just write 1; and if I need to raise something to the first power, I don’t need to write the power at all. So, there’s no confusion at all by writing h^0 instead of h^{(0)} ! If I need to square it, I can write h^{02}. If I need to square h^{(1)}, then I can write h^{12}; it’s unlikely I’ll need to take anything to the 12th power.

It’s an awful idea and a sane reviewer would reject it, but it does save time when LaTeXing…