I am taking this to a different list and changing the subject, since we were on a tangent to the original subject (and also, we were not programming).
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Henry Rich <[email protected]> wrote: > Different people have different standards of acceptable rigor, I reckon. > To me, the context isn't enough to overcome the inaccuracy of the > statement. To me, words are meaningless without context, and I cannot accept the validity of ignoring one part of a reference work in interpreting another part of it. Reference works are expected to eliminate much (though perhaps not all) duplication. And rank is a pervasive concept, in J. > FWIW, in my first post on this I had originally typed 'wrong' and > replaced it with 'misleading', following much the train of thought you > have offered. I still think Ye Dic is wrong; but I'm dead certain it is > misleading. Then you would have been wrong in your first post, in my opinion. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- it's something I myself frequently am, and can help in learning -- but it's not always a good thing either. But you have been telling people that the information is not there in the dictionary when it's right there in front of their nose. "wrong" seems to describe this state. > I think the current language is a holdover from the days before &.: . That is true, in the chronological sense. But the dictionary has symbols for representing rank, and they could have been used as pronouns, and used in J expressions. > Now I can say that > u&.v is u&.:v"({. v b. 0) That is accurate, and might be a viable alternative to how the dictionary expresses it. But the existence of an alternative phrasing is not sufficient to show that the original symbols were incorrect. And, also, it's not just this one page that uses the convention of expressing the rank of the operation before the details of what goes on within that rank. > but back then there was no notation for that idea, and the Dictionary > just came close and was content. I think readers deserve better now. Back then, you could have written: v^:_1 @ u & v But I suppose a related issue is that there's multiple ideas being expressed. -- Raul > Henry Rich > > On 10/26/2011 9:09 PM, Raul Miller wrote: >> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Henry Rich<[email protected]> wrote: >>> I think it's fair to say the Dictionary is misleading because >>> >>> a. it contains a line that is not true; >> >> It's only "not true" when taken out of context -- you have to (a) >> ignore preceding material, and then (b) generalize a remaining >> statement and believe it covers the case treated by that preceding >> material >> >> This is somewhat like saying that a dictionary is wrong for claiming >> that "light" means "not weighing much" because someone who was not a >> native speaker was confused because they needed to treat a context >> having to do with illumination. >> >> It's only wrong if you overgeneralize. >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
