Re: Where is everybody?

On Apr 11, 4:45 pm, Matthias Klaey <m..._at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Aloha Kakuikanu" <aloha.kakuik..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Apr 9, 10:16 am, "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hey, where is everybody? Nobody's posting. What's up with that?
>
> >One suggestion to bring this board back to life is posting weekly
> >reviews or just references to some great articles. I assume a week is
> >reasonable timeframe for everyone to find something interesting.
>
> >Here we go: Eric Hehner "From Boolean Algebra to Unified Algebra".
>
> >One of the main article themes is the importance of notation. In
> >particular on p.7 in the section on Symmetry and Duality Eric argues
> >that /\ and \/ symbols are well chosen, while & and || are not!
>
> >Next, implication is a partial order relation -- couldn't agree more.
>
> [...]
>
> now that's some news... ;-)
>
> I would reccomend "George Boole, The laws of thought" 1854,

Can I just skip "The laws of thought" and glance over introductory logic textbook?
The pioneer work isn't always elegantly written, and is often burdened by
obsolete notation.

I'm not sure what caused your reaction -- was it that Eric's paper too ambitious,
or too accessible?

> plus one
> and a half century of follow up work on logic and (partial) order
> structures.

Which ones? Those that are introducing 3 different implication symbols? After
reading Eric's manuscript I understand why I always disliked those division-like
implication symbols.

> (sorry I don't mean to be rude, but it seems to me that the corpus of
> mathematics that underlies database theory is still very much
> underappreciated, even here.)

I'm not sure what underappreciation are you referring to. IMHO, the database
theory is overfocused on logic and set theory, both of which are only insignificant part
of contemporary mathematics. (I counted one topic out of 31 at www.arxive.org). Therefore, yes -- vast majority of mathematics is not touched by database theory -- but is it really what you wanted to say? Received on Mon Apr 16 2007 - 19:13:50 CEST