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Re: "Esoteric of the week"

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg122030] Re: "Esoteric of the week"
• From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
• Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:25:59 -0400 (EDT)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
• References: <j6q5mt$ov1$1@smc.vnet.net> <op.v21rrnmwqcgwdu@core2.lan> <j6rjtk$1mb$1@smc.vnet.net>

If something becomes widely known, it is no longer esoteric.
Is the point to eliminate esoterica, at least for people reading this 
newsgroup indefinitely?

If something is esoteric, it may be because there is no need for it to 
be widely known;  I think it is a good thing that most people do not use 
up their presumably limited stock of neuronal connections on esoterica 
such as Mathematica internals. They have enough trouble dealing with the 
real world; why must they consider one made up by Wolfram and company?

If the goal is to periodically (weekly?) describe some obscure feature 
that someone finds useful, that's certainly plausible.

Or UN-useful, that too. (e.g. "this esoteric feature is wrong"?)

Rehashing (say) the discussion about Accuracy and Precision, Inequality, 
SameQ, Significance arithmetic, physicists, mathematicians, and 
numerical analysts is maybe not worthwhile in the absence of a 
particular new misbehavior posted to the newsgroup, for which various 
partisans can provide opinions.

Maybe a carefully indexed / edited "advanced tips for Mathematica 
programmers", an on-line and growing collection, perhaps gleaned from 
this newsgroup, would be good.