From root: Why no mathematical symbols?
Are diagrams mathematically rigorous?
Yes. The diagrammatic language we use in this blog owes its mathematical rigour to the fact that any computation can be written as a series of function abstrations and applications.
Since all of the practically useful mathematical calculations that we typically talk about on this blog must ultimately be expressed in a computer, we can always find some diagrammatic description of the relevant mathematics that leverages the function abstractions.
References and further reading
Hardwick, Robert J. 2025. “Why no mathematical symbols?” umbralcalculations, November. https://umbralcalc.github.io/posts/why_no_mathematical_symbols.html.
Harel, David. 1988. “On Visual Formalisms.” Communications of the ACM 31 (5): 514–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/42411.42414.
Wikipedia contributors. n.d. “Lambda Calculus.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus.
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