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From: Alvaro Herrera <[email protected]>
To: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: Jürgen Purtz <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Math function description issue
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 19:11:48 -0400
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
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Tom Lane wrote:
> =?UTF-8?Q?J=c3=bcrgen_Purtz?= <[email protected]> writes:

> > a) In my opinion this wording is easier to understand because it avoids 
> > the negation via "not less".
> 
> That's a fair point.
> 
> The other difference is least/greatest versus smallest/largest.  I'm not
> sure if using least/greatest would help the people who misunderstand
> "smallest" as "closest to zero".  They might; but being less-common words,
> they might also confuse people whose native language isn't English.
> Anyone have an opinion about which to use?

As a non-native, the use of "least/greatest" makes it more explicit that
it refers to arithmetic inequality, whereas "smallest" sounds like it
may be related to absolute value comparisons.  It's true that
least/greatest are less common words, but that makes it more likely that
they would be looked up in a dictionary, whereas with smallest/largest
people might stick to intuitive knowledge and get them wrong.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services


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