Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 19:11:48 -0400
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen?= Purtz <juergen@purtz.de>,
	pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Math function description issue
Message-ID: <20160607231148.GA512061@alvherre.pgsql>
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Tom Lane wrote:
> =?UTF-8?Q?J=c3=bcrgen_Purtz?= <juergen@purtz.de> 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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