Re: Pizza Example

"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<kaXeN8ESmwhAFw3Z_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk>...
> In message <c0e3f26e.0404191515.429e6820_at_posting.google.com>, Tony
> <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> writes
> >> Yes, you CAN try to analyse and store that information, but you CANNOT
> >> do it in Science - entropy is a one-way-street. If you treat a database
> >> as an exercise in Pure Maths, I might agree with you, but as soon as you
> >> drag the real world into it (and if you don't, what's the *point* of a
> >> database), you have to deal with entropy.
> >
> >Since nothing is lost by the decomposition process (by definition),
> >entropy is about as relevant as Schrodinger's Cat and all your other
> >pop-science book obsessions.
>
> Let's decompose the real world into its fundamental particles. Ooops ...
> we've suddenly lost cause-and-effect !
>
> There is a limit to lossless decomposition - quantum mechanics says so.
> Okay, a GUT or TOE might revise our opinion of this, but that's beyond
> current knowledge.

Quantum mechanics concerns properties of matter, not data. It is one big, fat irrelevance to data modelling. In any case, normalisation of data never "splits the atom" (i.e. attribute values). This really is becoming a futile discussion! Received on Fri Apr 23 2004 - 11:29:24 CEST