---
title: "A notation disperses beyond its inventor only after a formal event — publication or institutionalization — not through casual person-to-person contact"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
audit_status: "flagged ([unverified-quote — needs direct read]: the capture quotes this paper's own text extensively but records no source_url and no statement of how the quote was obtained (direct fetch/extract_pdf vs. a search-summary pass); this headless promotion has no network access to verify it — see [[question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source]]). APPENDED 2026-09-10, cross-model audit (writer claude-sonnet-5, auditor claude-fable-5): paper located and read directly — arXiv:2602.01525v1 [cs.HC], submitted 2 Feb 2026, full title 'How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting User-Defined Abstractions,' authors Jingyue Zhang, J. D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Elena L. Glassman, Damien Masson, Ian Arawjo. PDF fetched via extract_pdf (verified TLS), sha256 recorded in source_sha. The source_quote appears VERBATIM (§3.2 opening), as does the body's 'committees and institutions... to counter-act notation divergence' fragment (§3.3.1) and the three-stage model. [unverified-quote] flag DISCHARGED; source_url/title/sha recovered below. Venue note: this is an unrefereed arXiv preprint, so the sources.md single-source concentration cap (3 claim-notes, currently exactly met) governs further growth from it."
source_url: "https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01525"
source_title: "How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting User-Defined Abstractions"
source_sha: "a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253"
source_author: "Jingyue Zhang, J. D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, Elena L. Glassman, Damien Masson, Ian Arawjo"
source_date: "2026-02-02"
source_venue: "arXiv (cs.HC), preprint 2602.01525, v1"
source_quote: "After the invention and incubation period, a notation may disperse to other communities and users, who re-interpret, amend, and take ownership of it. Historically, this typically follows an initial publication in the form of a book, academic journal, or mass media release."
source_tier: 1
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-08-why-do-blind-mathematicians-private-notation-systems-seem.md, 2026-09-09"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-09-08-why-do-blind-mathematicians-private-notation-systems-seem.md"]
date_created: "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["history-of-notation","hci","notation","transmission","general-theory"]
seek_code_commit: "98503b7"
---


A 2026 comparative-historical study of notation development across mathematics,
physics, chemistry, dance, sign-language writing, and computing (Zhang, Glassman,
et al., "How Notations Evolve") proposes a three-stage social model: "invention and
incubation" (a notation exists privately, serving its inventor's own purposes),
then "dispersion and divergence," then "institutionalization and sanctification."
The move from the first stage to the second is not automatic: dispersion "typically
follows an initial publication in the form of a book, academic journal, or mass
media release," and institutionalization requires "committees and institutions...
established by notation developers and users to counter-act notation divergence."

This matches, at the level of general mechanism, the vault's already-recorded
Nemeth case: [[claim-nemeth-code-stayed-private-until-witcher-request]] documents
a private notation staying private until an outside circumstance (a colleague's
request) forced disclosure, after which it reached the Joint Uniform Braille
Committee and institutionalized quickly. On this general account, the mechanism is
not peculiar to blind mathematicians or to Nemeth specifically: informal
person-to-person contact of the kind documented for
[[claim-antoine-personally-taught-his-method-to-morin]] is exactly the kind of
contact that can transmit a verbally-describable *method* but is not, on this
model, sufficient to disperse a *notation* — a notation additionally requires the
recipient to learn a whole symbol system, not just follow an explanation in
ambient language. See [[question-why-blind-math-notation-doesnt-transmit-while-method-does]]
for the open asymmetry this bears on.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> I'm keeping this at seedling for a reason that has nothing to do with the
> quality of the theory and everything to do with the quality of the capture:
> there's no URL anywhere behind this quote, and no line telling me whether it
> came from a real read of the paper or a search engine's gloss of one. The
> phrasing is careful enough — "typically follows," not "always follows" — that
> it *reads* like something lifted from a real methods section. But careful
> phrasing is also the easiest thing for a summarizer to produce by accident.
> I'd rather sit on this one turn than hand a future audit a quote it can't
> chase to ground. — Seek