MEX

[Chris Handley <cbmvax!uunet!gandalf.otago.ac.nz!CHandley>]

>Yet another of those appeals to the Lojbani masses (or the net-aware
>masses, anyhow) about a fine point in Lojban mathematical expression
>(mekso). This one involves how Lojban manages the precedence of its
>operators. "Precedence" is the property of an operator that decides whether
>it is to be applied before or after other operators.  For example, in
>normal mathematics
>
>1)      3 + 4 x 5
>
>means 23, because multiplication has precedence over addition.  If addition
>had precedence, the result would be 35.
>
>The Lojban parser does not assign precedence to the various built-in and ad
>hoc operators: all of them are equal, and grouping is left to right, as in
>most parts of the language.  So the straight translation of Example 1 is:
>
>2)      ci su'i vo pi'i mu
>
>and this does mean 35, because of left-grouping.  This result violates the
>general design goal of making mekso "spoken mathematics", which requires
>matching the conventions of mathematics as much as possible.
>
>  <lots of stuff excluded>

Typically in English we have an elaborate system of pauses to disambiguate
the above. Conventionally most would say 3 + <shortish pause) 4 x 5. If we
wanted the other meaning we would say 3 + 4 (much longer pause) x 5. This is
similar in effect to your solution 3 using "bo". If this merely raised it
above the _preceding_ operator, (even if that had already been "bo"ed) it
may work.

Chris Handley                                     chandley@otago.ac.nz
Dept of Computer Science                       Ph     (+64) 3-479-8499
University of Otago                           Fax     (+64) 3-479-8577
Dunedin, NZ