Note in-line
--
Regards
Jonathan Lewis
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/faq/ind_faq.html
The Co-operative Oracle Users' FAQ
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/seminar.html
Optimising Oracle Seminar - schedule updated Sept 19th
"Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:1100078183.371334.62530_at_f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> The other suggestion that I'd make is that I at least, but I believe
> others, tend to post demonstrations rather than 'proofs', for example I
> have posted a script to demonstrate uniform index height. You cannot
> use this script per-se to 'prove' that a b*-tree index is *always*
> balanced - one counter-example would be enough. Obviously as the number
> of times you run the script with different variables rises and you do
> not find an unbalanced index the likelihood of the assertion being
> false diminishes. By its nature scientific 'proof' rarely exists - the
> scientific method generally will only disprove theories (though there
> can be exceptions if you can express the theory mathematically).
> However as the number of times predictions are confirmed by different
> tests rises so too should your confidence in the theory.
>
This is actually a very important point, and one of my
more generic presentations discusses "justification,
demonstration, and proof" along those lines.
Received on Wed Nov 10 2004 - 16:19:38 CST
