Re: The horse race
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:16:05 -0800
Message-ID: <m31vv1pqjaveh1smm9dthmgj6fb41vet5t_at_4ax.com>
"Tony Andrews" <andrewst_at_onetel.com> wrote:
>Sorry to butt in, but I have just been read this and another related
>thread for the first time, and it is getting bizarre. Mark, are you
>asking Marshall to attempt to count a collection of some kind (punch
>cards, lines of code, whatever) when they are not in their correct
>order? And are you implying that he won't be able to do it?
I'm pretty sure. Some of those punch card programs ran hundreds of cards. As cliched as the joke is, I'm sure one or more people dropped their boxes of cards on the way to the old central computer card readers. It's a lot to resort, if, assuming if, the cards were not otherwise numbered in order.
The problem appears to be that in order to think in terms of sets and the 'new math', that some are driven to defend it to an absurd degree, claiming that proper order is essentially irrelevant. And I've simply tried to offer numerous examples showing that proper order is essential to most all data. However accounted, in a database, that order must be accounted. Other examples were a roster of US Presidents, start and finish positions in a horse race, literally the order of words and phrases in these very messages back and forth, and so on. Received on Fri Feb 24 2006 - 23:16:05 CET