Re: Counting propositions

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"Tony" <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> wrote in message news:c0e3f26e.0406160241.31623d1c_at_posting.google.com... > "x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<40cf02c7$1_at_post.usenet.com>...
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> > "Tony" <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> wrote in message
> > news:c0e3f26e.0406150554.6822ed6f_at_posting.google.com...
> > > "x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:<40cecf85_at_post.usenet.com>...
> > > > **** Post for FREE via your newsreader at post.usenet.com ****
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> > > >
> > > > "Tony" <andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk> wrote in message
> > > > news:c0e3f26e.0406150222.fe2eea5_at_posting.google.com...
> > > > > "x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:<40ce9db7_at_post.usenet.com>...
> > > > > > Ok. But why there is a need to know this number ?
> > > > > > It is like saying "today I made 100 affirmations".
> > > > >
> > > > > Have you never wanted to know how many of something you had? Can
you
> > > > > not envisage a large business wanting to know, for example, how
many
> > > > > employees it has?
> > > >
> > > > Employees yes. Propositions no.
> > >
> > > Very droll ;-)
> > >
> > > But the fact is that from the N propositions we have that say "We have
> > > an employee named xxx with salary yyy ...", we can deduce the useful
> > > fact that we have N employees - simply by counting the propositions.
> >
> > What made you so sure.

>
> What makes you so unsure?  Are you making some kind of philosophical
> point that I'm not getting?

Well, because you don't directly count employees, but you count propositions about employees instead, it is a legitimate question to ask if the result is accurate and why.

Other reasons:
- the database may contain propositions about past, current and future employees
- the database may contain propositions about employees in different relations (or relvars)
- it might be hard to distinguish propositions about employees from other propositons in the database

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