$\nabla$ is a math thing too right? Do people write $\nabla$ or $\vec{\nabla}$? Which is more standard?

circle bundles are classified by their Euler class over any reasonable space

where I guess reasonable should mean "paracompact, Hausdorff and has the homotopy type of a CW-complex"

@Obliv mathematicians mostly don't put arrows on top of things, that's a physicist thing

Ok, I'll stick to math convention since I already do that for multi-var stuff.

still don't understand why physicists use $\theta$ for azimuthal coordinate

it's pretty standard to use $\theta$ for polar coordinates so why wouldn't it remain the polar coordinate shrug

I use $\varphi$ as polar coordinate

How come?

@Thorgott truest

I absolutely abhor arrows on top of things

$\vec{\text{good to know}}$

smol arrow

like if you're putting arrows on top of stuff then you're not thinking as generally as you could, is first, and you are obscuring notation, is second

well maybe not "obscuring notation", I just mean it looks bad

what's not general about arrow notation?

Because vectors are not just 3 or even finite-dimensional, sometimes they are functions, they arise as objects all over the place

so instead of $\vec{x}$ I prefer just simple $x$

besides something like $\vec{x}\cdot \vec{y}$ looks less pleasant than $x\cdot y$

I don't think the arrow alone defines the vector to be in 3 dimensions

not what I said anyway

apparently it's somewhat standard to use arrows only in handwriting and boldface for printing.

I definitely don't like typing \vec{} all the time. Also, it should be clear from the context what's a vector and what isn't. If we're using $\times$ then obviously they're vectors. It also doesn't matter for inner product so yea

the arrows are p much always unnecessary fluff

@Obliv That is correct.

$\renewcommand\vec[1]{\mathbf{#1}}$

$\vec{x}$

Huh...

Well, that works.

I'd rather have that space on top of $x$ reserved for something actually meaningful

@Obliv In a context where some things are scalars and some things are vectors (or whatever), I would prefer for the notation to distinguish between them. Either by changing the symbol (making it bold, putting a line over it, whatever), or (and this is my preference) just by choice of names, e.g. $f,g,h$ for vectors, $\alpha, \beta, \gamma$ for scalars.