Tense in Mathematical English

Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense—and the relative infrequency of the past tense—in mathematical writing. However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGlobal Philosophy Vol. 34; no. 1-6
Main Authors Inglis, Matthew, Strauss, Jacob
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.12.2024
Subjects
Cognitive Psychology
Education
Linguistics
Logic
Ontology
Philosophy
Research Note
Tense
Corpus linguistics
Mathematical language
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Summary:Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense—and the relative infrequency of the past tense—in mathematical writing. However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an analysis of corpora of mathematical and day-to-day English. We conclude that the present-to-past ratio of tenses is at least 3:1 in mathematical English, compared to approximately 5:7 in day-to-day English. Further, we show that this tendency to favour the present tense is almost universally present in written mathematics.
ISSN:2948-152X
2948-1538
DOI:10.1007/s10516-024-09707-4