By these criterion, Psychology is the King of the Sciences. Nick knows
full well, but many Friammers would be surprised how much effort psychologists
put into projects that are 'not even close' to formally
correct!
Eric
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 12:43 AM, Nicholas
Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net
Saul Caganoff wrote:
Programming is much easier because much of it is a process of trial
and error. You can generate any old crap (many programmers do) and
gradually refine it by successively throwing it at:
a) a compiler
Yes, some of the rigor is now automated. That's progress.
Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 12/14/2009 09:43 PM:
I wonder what you all think about it.
It seems clear to me ... digression: for those that don't know, whenever
someone says it seems clear to me, they are about to say something
fragile and weak that can be shattered with the slightest
Lot's of curl up in front of the fire reading in Philosophical Transactions
of The Royal Society B:
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1537.toc
- Simon Levin
Crossing scales, crossing disciplines: collective motion and collective
action in the Global Commons
- Martin A.
Thanks for this pointer, Roger.
On Dec 15, 2009, at 10:04 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
Lot's of curl up in front of the fire reading in Philosophical
Transactions of The Royal Society B:
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1537.toc
Simon Levin
Crossing scales, crossing
Who the Hell is Dr. Thurston? And how does he support his astonishing
statement that mathematical proofs are easier than programming? I can
respond only with my own experience. I was a mathematics scholar at the
University of Cambridge (like Newton, but a little later). My supervisor and
I think this is him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thurston
Thanks
Robert C
plissa...@comcast.net wrote:
Who the Hell is Dr. Thurston? And how does he support his astonishing
statement that mathematical proofs are easier than programming? I
can respond only with my own experience.
I believe Thurston is referring to the formal syntax of the computer
languages he is using: there is no ambiguity .. even to the point of
having syntax rules, generally in BNF (Backus–Naur Form). And at the
time of his writing the article, he was likely using Algol, a rather
advanced and
On 12/15/09 12:27 PM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
I think this is him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thurston
The essay that Russ mentioned only mentions programming in passing.. He
doesn't say anything about it relative to `intellectual challenge', but
he does talk a lot about what is
Robert,
thanks for the additional quotations.
However, you made a slip of the fingers when you keyed in one of the passages.
To head off needless controversy, I key it in correctly below. The capitalized
word is where the slipup occured.
Mathematics as we practice it is much MORE
http://www.neuroquantology.com/journal/index.php/nq/index
--Mikhail
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
On 12/15/09 2:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
However, you made a slip of the fingers when you keyed in one of the
passages. To head off needless controversy, I key it in correctly
below. The capitalized word is where the slipup occured.
Sorry about that, I need a compiler to throw my
An interesting book review:
A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing
By JOHN
MARKOFFhttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.html?inline=nyt-per
Published: December 14, 2009
In a speech given just a few weeks before he was lost at sea off the
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