Saturday, March 19, 2016

"Do this" or "Will this" in questions



I have a question sentence:



"Will this set of vectors form an orthogonal basis for the system?".




Is it ok to start with "Will this" or "Do this" is more appropriate?


Answer



You should prefer Does this... ?. (Not Do this... ?.)



In general, Math is about things that are eternally true. It exists outside of time. We use the present simple for talking about such things.



There are circumstances when will is more appropriate. For instance:





If I use this method described to obtain a set of vectors, will it form an orthogonal basis?




But these are exceptional.


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