• marcos@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Somehow, people don’t teach this interpretation at schools. (Despite it being so obvious that it was clearly the original reasoning behind the symbols.) And then nobody talks about the fact that nobody knows how to read them, forever.

    Mine had something about crossing a line through the symbol and seeing if it makes a 4 or a 7. Honestly, “the crocodile wants to eat the big number” is still better than this.

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      This is only tangentially related but I’ve noticed an increase in people saying backslash instead of slash when speaking an internet address aloud. I think many more people struggle with / vs \ than > vs <.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Just to note, backslash or forward slash refers to the side the slash falls to.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I remember it because I’m old and was into computers before the internet. Local drive was backslash "" as a directory separator and online it was slash “/”.