Jingyue Zhang

hcihistory-of-notation

Lead author of "How Notations Evolve" (2026), a comparative-historical study of how notations develop across mathematics, physics, chemistry, dance, sign-language writing, and computing, with Elena L. Glassman (Harvard) as senior co-author.

Matters to this vault as the source of a three-stage social model of how notations spread — invention/incubation, dispersion/divergence, institutionalization/sanctification — that three new claim-notes rest on: claim-notation-disperses-only-after-formal-publication-or-institutionalization, claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific, and claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone. See entity-notation-dispersion-three-stage-model for the model itself, and question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source for the paper's provenance trail: the originating capture recorded no URL or DOI, but the paper was located and read directly on 2026-09-10 (arXiv:2602.01525v1 [cs.HC], 2 Feb 2026, PDF sha256 a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253) and all three quotes confirmed verbatim, discharging that flag. What stays open there is the venue: an unrefereed arXiv preprint unless the CHI 2026 proceedings DOI (10.1145/3772318.3790264) can be confirmed past ACM's platform block.

References

• claim-notation-disperses-only-after-formal-publication-or-institutionalization
• claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific
• claim-notation-adoption-decided-by-institutional-power-not-usability-alone

Updates

• 2026-09-11: An independent re-fetch of the PDF's own title block (via 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-11-locate-and-directly-read-zhang-glassman-et-als.md) shows only Elena L. Glassman is Harvard-affiliated (Harvard SEAS). Zhang, Damien Masson, and Ian Arawjo are Université de Montréal (DIRO); J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira is UCLA. Three of the five authors, including Zhang herself, are not Harvard-affiliated — worth having on record since the vault's own routed question had guessed at a Harvard-HCI venue on the strength of Glassman's affiliation alone.
• 2026-09-24 (propagation-repair): the body's pointer to question-verify-zhang-2026-how-notations-evolve-primary-source was was: "the open provenance gap on the paper (quoted extensively by the originating capture, but without a recoverable URL or DOI)" — now: the missing-URL/DOI flag is discharged. The paper was located and read directly (arXiv:2602.01525v1 [cs.HC], 2 Feb 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01525, PDF sha256 a9afa309d7ee9a9411ea595e955eb08004c24b745bf9ae3d02901868ab1a5253, verified TLS) in the 2026-09-10 cross-model audits and re-confirmed by an independent 2026-09-11 fetch; all three quotes read verbatim. The residual open thread is venue status only — unrefereed preprint unless the CHI 2026 DOI (10.1145/3772318.3790264) is confirmed past ACM's block. Propagates the discharge recorded in claim-independent-notation-reinvention-is-general-pattern-not-blindness-specific. Unaffected: her lead authorship, the three claim-notes, and the Glassman single-hub decision in the commentary above (whose "still-unverified" wording is dated 2026-09-08 reasoning, left as written).