Hi Brian, Thanks for keeping the dialogue going. Here are some responses.
The plus signs are there to indicate that there is something causing the result to originate from the initial argument. This may be a flawed argument but it seems to me that to just have the result spring from the argument without the appearance of the plus would weaken the relationship between Plus (+) and the final result. The question of why use the vector and matrix examples at all caught me a bit off guard. After some thought (why was I including them in a scalar operation?), I realized that I would not need to include them if I was only teaching about addition or conjugation, but the goal is to teach how J works (or even, could we be so bold to presume, how to think when using J primitives). Given this ambitious goal, the sooner we show that in J the scalar operations scale to higher dimensions, the quicker J newcomers may begin to think outside of the looping paradigm of scalar languages. Even Plus (+) applied to a matrix eliminates what traditional languages would require loops to accomplish. I have not yet started on the extended version of Plus (+) but I had already planned to include your 'length error' example of 2 3 + 3 4 5 with the extra time. The 2 + 'a', 1r2 + _6 and even 2j3 + 1j2 can be added as well, although the detailed explanations of the 'r' and 'j' notation would be included in a number type animation elsewhere (but possibly accessible via a link). Thanks for the suggestions, the dialogue keeps opening up new directions which I don't think I would discover on my own. Cheers, bob On -Mar13-2010, at -Mar13-201011:48 AM, Brian Schott wrote: > Bob, > > Yes, I like the most recent animations. Here is some of my thought process. > > Why have the + signs in the last two examples when the arrows suggest > the transition? > > Why have array and vector examples when the verb is scalar, anyhow? > Why not reduce all of the examples to scalars except maybe to > economize on time? The nonscalar activity is better covered in a > generic section on how verbs deal with higher or lower rank data, > except where a verb does this in a special manner as does the dyad > Append and its relatives. > > Shouldn't the animation focus on what the target does (e.g., 1r2 + _6 > in the case of Plus) and what it does not do (e.g., 2 + 'a' in the > case of Plus)? > > Great work, everybody, especially, Bob. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
