Different people have different standards of acceptable rigor, I reckon.
To me, the context isn't enough to overcome the inaccuracy of the
statement.
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.
I think the current language is a holdover from the days before &.: .
Now I can say that
u&.v is u&.:v"({. v b. 0)
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.
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.
>
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