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I am looking for a Math symbol that means "associated" and I don't mean "associated" as something as complicated as isomorphism or anything super fancy.

I am looking for a symbol that means something like "$\triangle ABC$ [insert symbol] $A_{1}$" (as in triangle ABC "associated" with area_{1}) Or want to say something like "The eigenvector associated with the eigenvalue"

You get the idea.

Lemon
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    Even if it exists, using such an obscure symbol in the middle of your sentence is not likely to make your idea any more clear. – Austin Mohr Nov 02 '12 at 05:24
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    I agree. Is it really worth replacing "associated with" with "$\leftrightsquigarrow$" or something? Some things are better expressed with symbols, but probably not this. – wj32 Nov 02 '12 at 05:31
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    I think the notion of associated with is too vague to have a standard symbol associated with it. – Kevin Carlson Nov 02 '12 at 05:43
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    One common way you can "associate" things together is to subscript them by the same index. For example, a matrix might have eigenvalues $\lambda_1, \lambda_2, \ldots$ and eigenvectors $v_1, v_2, \ldots$; then everyone understands implicitly that $\lambda_i$ is associated with $v_i$ via the shared index $i$. –  Nov 02 '12 at 06:20
  • There should be a symbol for correlation . – Bob Stein Aug 28 '18 at 13:16

4 Answers4

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If you want to use such a symbol for association in some sense, you would have to define its meaning precisely first in your exposition. I suggest using $\sim$ for your purpose.

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I agree with Austin, but you can always check here if you are still unsatisfied, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_symbols.

PJTraill
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boby
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In general, you can use a little chain link symbol since the meaning behind "associated" is "connection" where you are not specifying the type of connection or how they are connected. That will reduce your horizontal space and make sense to people.... ~ is the NOT symbol in logic so never use that! Don't use the squiggle "if, and only if" symbol either because that insinuates that there is some kind of bijection and that is a specific type of connection. Your only caring about if there is "some kind of connection/association" between two different sets/elements/statements/primitive statements/etc. You should treat it as if it were a logical connective so again, don't use NOT because that would confuse logisticians and pure math people most definitely. The squiggle double arrow would be even more confusing like saying a "loose bijection" which is quite the fancy abstraction that is not what your aiming for... just a simple link between two "things" should be sufficient for what you want.

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You can always make up a symbol (I've done so on several occasions), but, like user4594 said, whenever you first use it in a work, you need to always precisely define it. If you find yourself needing to use the word association or correlation a lot, and you don't want to use existing notation (e.g. corr(A,B)), then you can insert a symbol and either make a footnote that defines the symbol or include a legend/key at the beginning or end of what you are creating.

Using a symbol for every relationship between arguments often unnecessarily burdens your reader, but sometimes, I find that it helps me remember things better if I can assign symbols to certain words, especially if I end up using the words repeatedly in a single work.

Here is an example of a group of symbols I have created (not designed, but assigned): "⌽A, ⦵B, ⍉C, ⦵D" ...meaning: "If A, then B, else if C, then D." I know that "A⟶B" ("If A, then B") is more commonly used, but in my particular document, a ⟶ meant something else entirely. If you want to make a novel symbol but don't want to personally design one (font editors can get really complicated), there are some fonts you can download that consist mostly or entirely of symbols (many of which you will probably have never seen before). Some examples, at least in Windows (I don't own a Mac or Linux machine), are Cambria Math, Wingdings (including 2 and 3), Segoe UI Symbol is quite extensive (it even has symbols of playing cards and dominoes among other things), as is Segoe UI Emoji, and Symbol. The font Segoe UI Historic has a lot of random characters that were probably part of some ancient languages, like (click here if you can't see them). There are plenty of options to choose from. If you use an obscure symbol, and you want to send the document to someone else, either send them the font file you used (impractical) or save the document as a *.pdf or image file, because if the other person doesn't have the font installed on their device, they will probably just see boxes.

Usually, though, I only do things like that when I'm making notes for myself (I use plenty of custom shorthands when I take notes). Neuropsychological research has suggested that the human mind has a rough limit, reported as anywhere from 3-7 distinct items, to what can be held in working memory at a time (Cowan, 2010), so it may be counterproductive to use too many symbols, as your ideas will be lost to your readers while they try to keep all the symbols straight. It's probably a good idea to apply the adage: when in doubt, just write it out.

Violet L.
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