Re: In an RDBMS, what does "Data" mean?

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"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:1vLKA7AJ20rAFwm2_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk...
> In message <7Lzrc.20286$zw.10403_at_attbi_s01>, Marshall Spight
> <mspight_at_dnai.com> writes
> >"Anthony W. Youngman" <wol_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:uMz8IRDsXHqAFw+B_at_thewolery.demon.co.uk...
> >>
> >> But both are attempts to apply a mathematical model to a real world
> >> problem. Viewed from a dispassionate oversight, both are instances of
> >> the SAME problem, and the same techniques can be applied to solving
> >> them. Namely "how well does my mathematical model work in the real
> >> world?".
> >
> >It's clear you love this analogy, but it doesn't work.
> >
> >What we put in the database is data, not the real world. Neither do
> >we attempt to say anything about the real world with our databases.
> >Consider a payroll database. Does it contain one single fact about
> >the natural world? It does not. It has names, social security numbers,
> >addresses, salaries, phone numbers, etc. These are all 100% human
> >constructs; none of them are found anywhere in the real world; they
> >are exclusively in our heads.

>

But they could be fantasy :-)

> Names, Social Security Numbers, etc etc are all ways of describing real
> things (in these cases a person). An address describes a real thing - a
> building. Etcetera.

Or an imaginary thing :-)
The question is: How do you test if some "fact" is real or imaginary ?

> But the point is, if you do not have some way of FORMALLY converting
> between a person (you, me, whoever) or a phone (a physical thing you can
> hold) or a building (something you can look at), and the data that
> describes those things, then your theory of data MUST be unscientific.

Well, we can have data about many kinds of "things": physical, chemical, imaginary, etc.:-)
Why are you interested only in "physical" ones ? :-)

> Bearing in mind that this is the study of philosophy ("does the tree,
> continue to be, if no-one's there to see") I'm quite happy with a
> scrappy attempt to explain things. But the conversion has to be both
> ways - with "mass" we know exactly what Newton meant in his mathematical
> theory, and we know exactly what we mean in the real world when we pick
> up a heavy object. And we (now, thanks to Einstein) know that those two
> definitions (the real and the mathematical) don't quite tie up.

Many of us gave up asking WHY long time ago. Instead, we ask HOW MANY/MUCH :-)

> But if you can't give me a way of converting between "data" and the
> real-world objects it describes - in both directions! - then by
> definition any theory of data must be unfalsifiable, therefor it is
> unscientific, therefor it lives very firmly in the realms of mathematics
> and religion. I'm sorry, but I'm a scientist by training and I most
> definitely don't believe in that religion.

We have NOTARIES, ACCOUNTANTS, LAWYERS,... :-)

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