Re: Idempotence and "Replication Insensitivity" are equivalent ?
Date: 23 Sep 2006 01:26:47 -0700
Message-ID: <1159000007.641715.46250_at_i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Marshall wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> >
> > Now supose we are talking about sets (and require A to be associative,
> > commutative and idempotent), the it is clear that you can still give a
> > triple (E,S,A) such that it computes for example the top 5 of the set
> > according to some ordering.
>
> Something that's always bugged me about this sort of construction,
> is that I never see authors distinguishing between a partial order
> and a total order. It seems to me that if the supplied ordering is a
> partial ordering, and you want to do something like top 5, you have
> to either introduce nondeterminism or change top 5 to top at least
> 5. Yes?
Something like that.
> Or is this just considered so obvious that no one bothers
> to make it explicit?
It's simply not that important at this stage of the discussion. Nits should be picked when they are ripe, not before. :-)
- Jan Hidders