Talk:Fraction reduction

Anomalous cancellation

Seems to me that this task would be better titled: Anomalous cancellation, or at least "Fraction reduction by anomalous cancellation" so it is easier to google. --Thundergnat (talk) 00:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

I never heard of that term,   nothing about that term suggests to me fraction reductions.   But if I had heard of it,   I would've added it to the task's preamble.   I'm sure that everyone knows what   reduction of fractions   means.   However,   I'll add the term to the Rosetta Code task preamble as a comment   ("it's also known as")   to facilitate keyword searching.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 09:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Now, the term   accidental cancellation of fractions   sounds like a term that most people might know what it means or intuits.   I'll also add this term to the task preamble.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 09:50, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Not having heard of it doesn't mean it's not the more correct name. Intuition has little to do with it. If you had never heard of the term Humble numbers, how would you intuit what they were? Lets do an experiment. Google "Fraction reduction", "Anomalous cancellation", and "Accidental cancellation" and see which has the overwhelming majority of relevant links. It would just be more accurate to retitle the page "Fraction reduction by anomalous cancellation" or "Fraction reduction by accidental cancellation" or "Accidental cancellation of fractions" to make it clear that it is not traditional fraction reduction. (And I know that the task preamble makes that clear, but web searches will not be so discerning.) --Thundergnat (talk) 10:05, 4 September 2019 (UTC)