Re: RM formalism supporting partial information
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:59:58 -0400
Message-ID: <4748c892$0$5274$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
>
>
> Not that I'd call my own experience conclusive, but the big systems I've
> seen had way too much partial information. That sounds like an oxymoron
> - a better way to put that might be that they had way too much optional
> information. The people who signed the cheques were usually at some
> distance from the apps or mostly ignorant of them or mostly ignorant,
> period, full-stop. Nearly every time I pressed requirements with the
> authoritative people I would find that partial mean optional and was the
> result of wishful thinking, slipshod biz practices or suchlike.
>
> I'll grant that most dbms products don't help the situation since the
> ones I've heard of generally offer only a logical interface for storage.
> Eg., a small business may well have customers who have addresses but
> not telephone numbers. While I hope I would choose to starve before
> working on a "data-mining" app, mostly because I don't agree with that
> as a way to do business, I don't see any wrong with nulls in an app that
> is concerned with trends and statistics rather than individuals. At one
> time I did a lot of consumer survey programming and the "DK's"/"don't
> know" responses were sometimes just as useful to clients as specific
> answers.
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:59:58 -0400
Message-ID: <4748c892$0$5274$9a566e8b_at_news.aliant.net>
paul c wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
> ..
>
>> It seems to me that anything that we can say about partial >> information can be said with total information. In other words, >> efforts at making the *system* understand partial information >> are merely pushing systemward calculations that could be done >> in a system without any understanding of partial information. >> ...
>
>
> Not that I'd call my own experience conclusive, but the big systems I've
> seen had way too much partial information. That sounds like an oxymoron
> - a better way to put that might be that they had way too much optional
> information. The people who signed the cheques were usually at some
> distance from the apps or mostly ignorant of them or mostly ignorant,
> period, full-stop. Nearly every time I pressed requirements with the
> authoritative people I would find that partial mean optional and was the
> result of wishful thinking, slipshod biz practices or suchlike.
>
> I'll grant that most dbms products don't help the situation since the
> ones I've heard of generally offer only a logical interface for storage.
> Eg., a small business may well have customers who have addresses but
> not telephone numbers. While I hope I would choose to starve before
> working on a "data-mining" app, mostly because I don't agree with that
> as a way to do business, I don't see any wrong with nulls in an app that
> is concerned with trends and statistics rather than individuals. At one
> time I did a lot of consumer survey programming and the "DK's"/"don't
> know" responses were sometimes just as useful to clients as specific
> answers.
"don't know" is a specific answer to a survey question.
> It might have been you, Marshall who said here that we humans usually
> have no choice but to make decisions based on partial information (which
> certainly seems true when it comes to dbms implementers!) but I think
> that is different from a dbms who's purpose is merely to give a
> mechanical way to save us effort.
Received on Sun Nov 25 2007 - 01:59:58 CET