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namedtensor / notation

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Single letter names? #64

Open srush opened 3 years ago

srush commented 3 years ago

From Noah Smith on Twitter.

"Your axis labels are too fat. Single-letter symbols should suffice."

davidweichiang commented 3 years ago

Nothing about our notation forbids single-letter symbols, so I think that's a non-issue. However, it's possible that some LaTeX tuning could make long names look less fat. In a lot of places, \mathclap would improve appearance a lot. But doing that everywhere would lead to collisions.

srush commented 3 years ago

Whether it is possible or not, I still think it is worthwhile to decide from a style perspective. Are full names recommended / encouraged? Should we suggest style for short names if they are used (H, W or x, y)?

mglowacki100 commented 3 years ago

In my opinion, single letter names should be recommended, like k, v, s (key,value, sequnce), h1 (first hidden layer), d, f (data, features) with "legend". Better data-ink ratio. Names with different lengths add noise.

davidweichiang commented 3 years ago

It might be worth adding a note in the document saying that we prefer words but that single letters are also possible. It is also worth pointing out that our notation never concatenates two axis names, so there is never room for confusion between ax and a x.