- the day before i sent my thesis to the committee, i had endeavored to erase the word "rank" from all but three pages of it [1].
- evidently i missed a few spots.
so today i'm doing erasing and paraphrasing. - also, i feel like i'm violating some unspoken principles which many analysts share, as well as sabotaging any readership which my thesis (or the subsequent paper(s)) may ever claim.
- i mean, words like "module" and "free module" [2] and "rank" and "generator" and "homomorphism" will scare the analysts away.
maybe it would help if i add a disclaimer such as 'no, really: it's like a vector space. honest!'
on the other hand, "measure" and "Lipschitz function" and "weak-star convergence" and "rectifiability" will scare the algebraists. i can live with that, actually. - so if one believes in a two-party system for mathematics, then i am done for. fortunately, i do not! q:
[1] to explain, one page is to explain why "rank" is not a good word to use, and two more pages to remind the reader later (in case they forget).
[2] as far as i know, "free module" appears on one page as a necessary evil.
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