Re: Database design
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:53:41 -0800
Message-ID: <skbqv1tjte02nrjp7ti5f88dohb3nbd3j2_at_4ax.com>
"Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>Mark Johnson wrote:
>> "Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Even if the set were so ordered?
>> >Once you order a set, it's not a set any more.
>> Because by definition, correct? Alright:
>Yes, yes, yes. The *definition* of a set includes the fact
>that the members have no intrinsic order.
Alright.
If something is said to be a set, the elements are unsorted. They have no particular ranking with regard to any other element or member.
Fine. There can never be something known as an ordered or partially ordered set. The very idea of a proper order is meaningless when speaking of a set. Yes?
>> >Let's say you have some integers: 1 and 2.
>> Let's say you have a roster of US Presidents.
>we move on to your US Presidents example.
Presidents is a great example.
>> So a set cannot be ordered because to place it in any order is to
>> redefine it as non-set?
>It is not "redefinition" at all.
Then you deny its a set, at all.
>> To become a set, the most important attribute of that set must be
>> discarded?
But things are becoming sets. To become a set, we're saying that the most important attribute, the most important bit of information, must simply be discarded?
>We cannot "discard" an order attribute of a set, because
>by definition no set ever had intrinsic order in the first place.
So a list with an intrinsic ordering, which is basically most every list of every thing one might imagine - is not a set, and perhaps is not even properly an object for the RM, if you took it that far?
>Thus it is not possible for order to be "the most important attribute."
It's the most important.
>Now, you might have a *list* of things; that *would* have an
>intrinsic order. You can make a set by taking the elements
>of the list and removing the intrinsic order, and discarding
>duplicates. The resulting set would not change the nature
>of the original list.
It would destroy it. If you remove the ordering, what you read, paragraph by paragraph, title by title, sidebar by sidebar, in the daily newspaper, or online, would become gibberish. You'd have to try to piece it together, yourself, as a puzze. And on the other hand, if you necessarily retain the proper orde, then you have set of ordered entities and relations. While the latter is probably not controversial, the former is essentially the same, but said not to exist?
>Likewise, you can take a set and an
>order, and construct a list
Yeah - you could put a monkey with a typewriter, and hope for the best. But I suspect that works out only in theory, not in fact.
>> But because someone kept saying, and confusing 'first responders' -
>> fire, what fire? Building, what building?
>These strawman analogies have no bearing on the topic.
A strawman is attributing something that can't be fairly attributed, because an irrelevant cliche serves as answer. But this can be fairly attributed, and is impossible to answer - it's incomprehensible. Whatever you call a rose, it's a rose. If the building is burning, and you feel the heat, you can it hot flashes, but the building is still burning. Received on Thu Feb 23 2006 - 04:53:41 CET