The author points out the mostly obvious consequences of the fact that equality in mathematics is used in a variety of ways. As such, equality is not trivially mapped into the various representations of mathematical notions as data structures in computer algebra systems are.

The paper does not contribute to the matter at hand, but rather reads as a workshop presentation (Calculemus 2001) to open discussion between computer-algebra system designers and theorem-proving system designers.

In the discussion of equality of data structures, the author complains that circularity is not addressed. He could refer to the common Lisp X3J13 committee comments: if neither equal nor equalp is found to be appropriate in a particular situation, programmers are encouraged to create another operator that is appropriate rather than blame equal or equalp for “doing the wrong thing.”