Re: Temporal database - no end date

On Jan 20, 7:09 am, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
>
> > Well, pooh. "Reified" is the best term I've been able to come up
> > with for the difference between a number represented algebraically
> > and one spelled out as a binary quantity. Do you have a better
> > one? (And in fact I could argue that your usage of the word
> > is nonstandard.)
>
> How about 'calculate' ? Nobody will ever exactly calculate an irrational
> number. At best, one can approximate the number even if one can
> approximate the number to any arbitrary precision. Engineers of course
> realize that too much precision is just a waste of time due to the
> limited accuracy of our measuring devices.
> [...]
> My usage might very well be nonstandard within some limited scope and
> that limited scope might very well contain all of c.d.t. However, I
> suggest the term is largely unfamiliar even within that scope, and the
> dictionary definition opens the doors to the nitpickers.

Yeah, that bothers me about the term as well.

I don't much like "calculate" either. But I did come up with a new term: "digit sequence." This is nice because it doesn't specify the base; it could be 2 or 10 or anything else, and that won't affect the relevant property. Neither pi nor any other irrational will ever be represented in a computer as a digit sequence, because the size of the universe is not sufficient to contain all the digits. Other representations, such as an approximation function, a greek letter, an algebraic formula, can all precisely represent an irrational, but not a digit sequence.

The term also has the advantage of being fairly accessible.

Marshall Received on Sun Jan 21 2007 - 01:20:28 CET