Where are my commas?! (Math)

To get back to the OP, I think that the reason that “pure” mathematics tends to avoid putting the commas in numbers is to avoid any complications with writing things as ordered pairs and other tuples. For example, you can write one of the solutions to the Pythagorean theorem as

3704955[SUP]2[/SUP] + 4939940[SUP]2[/SUP] = 6174925[SUP]2[/SUP].

And as you can see, there is little difference between this form and

3,704,955[SUP]2[/SUP] + 4,939,940[SUP]2[/SUP] = 6,174,925[SUP]2[/SUP].

But, such solutions are most commonly offered as Pythagorean triples which look like this:

(3704955, 4939940, 6174925).

Using commas in the numbers would give rise to

(3,704,955, 4,939,940, 6,174,925),

which is much harder to read, and some people are not so good at putting the spaces after the commas, like (3, 4) gets written (3,4). So you get a giant visual mess.

Remember, also, that the higher you get in math, the less likely you are to use actual specific numbers larger than about 8. And when you do use them, you are most often generating a list of solutions to equations, of which there are often many. So, a compact way of writing them down, with tuples, is generally preferred. All such math books that I have in my possession write large numbers in this way, with no spaces or commas or anything else between thousands. That is more of a custom in the sciences and finance.

Off hand, I wonder if the generally mathematical custom of avoiding thousands separators reflects that the exactness of the number in question, whereas in the sciences and finance, the order of magnitude of a number is among its more important aspects.

For example, the equation

95800[SUP]4[/SUP] + 217519[SUP]4[/SUP] + 414560[SUP]4[/SUP] = 422481[SUP]4[/SUP]

disproves the conjecture that any fourth power is not the sum of 3 other fourth powers. Here, every digit of the number down to the units place is essential, and ignoring everything after the first or second most significant digits doesn’t really work.

For a more scientific number, say the Avogadro constant, 6.022 141 79(30) × 10[SUP]23[/SUP], it’s not necessarily unwise to round and truncate to adapt to the situation at hand. Similarly, I don’t think too many people care if you have $132,465.22 in your account or $132,458.92, but most people would care a lot if they were supposed to have one of these amounts, but their account shows $108,543.49.

That’s why I wrote the informal way.

In my experience is rarely seen these days. DD/MM is used when no year is stated.