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Griff
June 8th, 2006, 11:09 PM
So can someone tell me exactly what this symbol means? I'm in a discrete mathematics class if that is at all applicable.

[ x + 1/2 ]

Only the top of the brackets are cut off so it looks like a 'L' and a backwards 'L'.
taurus
June 8th, 2006, 11:12 PM
A square brackets--[ ]!!!
The Mekon
June 8th, 2006, 11:17 PM
This link (http://www.staff.vu.edu.au/mcaonline/tool/symbols/symbol.html) may help you but I dont think that they are normally accepted symbols.

Actually I just found a new link (http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/Symbols.pdf) which shows them a delimiters - whatever that means
curuxz
June 8th, 2006, 11:37 PM
no he means with them in the shape of L's

IE [start L sentance end L sentance]

I think he may have a bad photocopy of normal brackets.
jpkotta
June 9th, 2006, 12:27 AM
That's the floor function. It rounds towards negative infinity.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FloorFunction.html
RAV TUX
June 9th, 2006, 02:42 AM
So can someone tell me exactly what this symbol means? I'm in a discrete mathematics class if that is at all applicable.

[ x + 1/2 ]

Only the top of the brackets are cut off so it looks like a 'L' and a backwards 'L'.

you could post your question in the Math Forum at Drexel:

http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=4157760&tstart=0
jpkotta
June 9th, 2006, 02:52 AM
Also, floor(x + 1/2) is the same (modulo the edges) as round(x), assuming round() rounds to the nearest integer.
aktiwers
June 9th, 2006, 03:00 AM
The ordinary rounding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding) of the number x to the nearest integer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest_integer_function) can be expressed as floor(x + 0.5).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_function
Griff
June 9th, 2006, 03:22 AM
That's the floor function. It rounds towards negative infinity.


That's it! Thanks
I would have done a search but even google might have a problem with 'math bracket L thing' ;)

I did a search for 'floor function' and I think I found what I need:

"The floor function assigns to the real number x the largest integer that is less than or equal to x. The ceiling function assighn to the real number x the smallest integer that is greater than or equal to x."