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I am writing a scientific article with a few mathematical equations. Can I assume that my audience will know what lhs and rhs mean?

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    The answer to the question as stated depends on your audience. I agree that this is not a mathematical question.2011-02-24

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If you even have to think if your audience knows what a particular abbreviation means, then you must explain it.

In any case, writing LHS/RHS in anything but very informal contexts seems simply unacceptable to me.

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I like to define acronyms like:

"The left hand side (LHS) of Equation 1..."

And then use LHS throughout the rest of the paper if it is used frequently. If you only use "left hand side" a few times, it's best to just spell it out.

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I think abbreviations like that rarely pay.

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    Ironic answer from someone with your name!2011-02-24
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I think it should be pretty obvious. Or you can simply say that LHS means "left hand side" and RHS means "right hand side." But many biologists have probably studied some probability or statistics. So they might have seen this notation before.

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    @David: I think it is proper to use capitalization.2011-02-24