Re: Stored fields ordered left to right

Dawn M. Wolthuis <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> schrieb:
> "Adrian Kubala" <adrian_at_sixfingeredman.net> wrote:
>> Dawn M. Wolthuis <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> schrieb:
>> > Hope has a cat named Geneva and a dog named Rugby.
>> > Shanna has no pets, but did have a dog named Monte who died in 2002.
>> >
>> > Given only these statements, I might immediately come up with
>> > something like this:
>> > [...]
>> > PEOPLE("12345") = { "Hope", { ("cat", "Geneva", NULL) , ("dog",
>> > "Rugby", NULL)} }
>> > PEOPLE("12346") = ( "Shanna", { ("dog", "Monte", "2002") } }
>>
>> This is not modeling, because all you've done is associate some lists
>> with each person, without any formal way to reason about what the lists
>> MEAN. I could just as well "model" the first proposition as:
>
> Are you saying it is not modeling because I did not show the logical
> steps I took to arrive at this or is it that modeling with a function
> is necessarily not a model or what?

You are not modeling with functions, you are modeling with lists. I can tell because there was no mention of lists in the original preposition, and lists are not required to describe functions, but nevertheless lists have snuck into your model. On the other hand, the above would be a perfectly good function-based model of "Person 12345 has the list (hope, (cat, geneva, null), (dog, rugby, null))".

I say it's not modeling because I don't believe you have a general theory for how prepositions (in this case) can be mapped to and from lists in a general way, with a useful algebra on lists which preserves the truth values of prepositions. It is not enough to provide a post-hoc rationalization for why you chose these particular lists for these particular examples. But if you do have such a theory I am excited to hear it. Received on Thu Jan 15 2004 - 00:36:40 CET