Also, clicking on the link to this essay ("Burke, C.D., *Elegant
Programming—* &.dfh, 1996.") at http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/ currently
gives an error as it apparently points to "elegant.htm.htm" instead of
"elegant.htm".

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> wrote:

> I was enjoying Chris Burke's 1996 essay on "Elegant Programming" -
> http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/elegant.htm - but when I tried some of his
> examples, one did not work.  The elegant derivation for harmonic mean from
> arithmetic mean:
>
>    am=. +/ % #
>    hm=. am &. %
>
> When "hm" is used on the argument "2 3 5" as shown in the essay, it returns
> the input instead of the answer "2.9032258".  A little investigation
> uncovered that the definition of harmonic mean in contemporary J should be
>
>    hm=. am &. (%"_)
>
> It would be nice to have these good examples that work with current J
> though it would lose some historical perspective.  Would it be possible to
> update this essay to include the currently working code, perhaps with a
> footnote indicating the historical evolution of the language?
>
> Regards,
>
> Devon
>
> --
> Devon McCormick, CFA
> ^me^ at acm.
> org is my
> preferred e-mail
>
>


-- 
Devon McCormick, CFA
^me^ at acm.
org is my
preferred e-mail
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