How often is terminology introduced or changed in the math community? I know that John Conway did it all the time - but he was distinguished and often naming as-yet-unnamed species.
I would like to see a minor change in terminology: Injective and surjective functions are usually referred to as 'one-to-one' and 'onto' respectively. But this sometimes leads to confusion with bijective functions. Indeed, Wikipedia notes, "The term one-to-one correspondence must not be confused with one-to-one function." Since 'one-to-one' and 'onto' are, in a way, complements of each other, why not change them to 'into' and 'onto'?
Surjective => 'onto'
Injective => 'into'
Any reason not to? Thoughts?
$\endgroup$ 2 Reset to default
