Is it ok to say "a big set of nodes" or should i use the word "large"? [closed]

Solution 1:

Mathematician here! I highly suggest using "large" in this scenario.

If I were reading a scholarly paper and a set was described as "big", I would bristle a little bit. There's nothing inherently wrong with it; rather, it would just "sound funny" to my ears, and I believe other mathematicians would say the same. If I read about "a large set", though, I wouldn't blink at all.

To wit, the Wikipedia page for the word "Large" even has a subcategory of phrases in mathematics that use that word (e.g. large cardinals, the law of large numbers, etc.). The page for "Big" has no such thing.

Solution 2:

Intuitively, as an English speaker, I would say "a big set of nodes" would mean a set of nodes with a large number of elements, while "a set of big nodes" would mean a set of nodes which were each individually large. However, I suspect that there might be field-specific jargon involved here - you may be better off asking in the Mathematics Stack Exchange, where mathematics specialists can answer your question.

That said, however, like some of the comments mentioned, "large" means roughly the same thing, and is slightly more formal than "big" is, so it may be more appropriate for an academic paper - however, it's possible that "large sets" is some sort of specifically-defined mathematical jargon that I'm unaware of.