The Americans and the French use a different notation for open intervals: The Americans use (x, y) while the French use ]x, y[. How did this notational divergence appear?
1 Answer
Notation $()$ is traditional, and $].[$ was introduced by Bourbaki.
Much of the Bourbaki notations and terminology became standard, but English speaking people are the most conservative ones in this respect:-) (Recall the history of the metric system:-)
Another example of the same is "injection", "surjection", "bijection". Many English authors still write "one-to-one", "onto" and "one-to-one and onto".
Another example: Bourbaki taught us that "positive" is $\geq 0$, and "strictly positive" is $>0$.
But many people still prefer "positive" to mean $>0$ and "non-negative" for $\geq0$.
Remark. I am educated in Ukraine in 1970-s, and I experienced a strong influence of Bourbaki on education. But I still like $(,)$, perhaps just for aesthetic reasons.
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4$\begingroup$ Thanks, very interesting, I had no idea that the definition "positive" is $\geq 0$ was from Bourbaki as well, I am always having trouble with that in the US. $\endgroup$ Nov 1, 2014 at 20:14
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6$\begingroup$ A friend of mine asked a member of Bourbaki, let's call him X-X. X, about this and indeed the usage is due to Bourbaki. X-X. X said Bourbaki wanted to allow the notation $\subset$ to include the possibility of equality, and not just mean a strict subset. Compatibly with that, they wanted $<$ to mean less than or equal to and $>$ to mean greater than or equal to. This is why Bourbaki started using the word positif to mean greater than or equal to 0. $\endgroup$– KCdMay 1, 2015 at 4:16
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2$\begingroup$ Yes, and Bourbaki had partial success: everyone uses $\subset$ nowadays in their sense. $\endgroup$ May 1, 2015 at 11:29
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4$\begingroup$ @AlexandreEremenko: From my, admittedly rather limited, experience I'd say the opposite is (still) true: since $<$ is usually interpreted as a strict inequality, I do prefer writing $\subseteq$ for (not necessarily strict) inclusion. $\endgroup$ May 30, 2017 at 14:17
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4$\begingroup$ @Otto: I use it in that way, and I am not wrong. $\endgroup$– timurSep 28, 2017 at 2:39
] [
notation is used in Belgium too, also in the Dutch-speaking part. $\endgroup$