On 06/09/2000 07:02:19 AM <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>� 09:58 2000-06-09 -0400, Fran�ois Pinard a �crit:
>>Tom Garland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
>> > TC304. Does anyone know if the following logical operators are
globally >
>> understood or must they be translated for each language?
>>
>> > AND
>> > OR
>> > ~ (not)
>
>[Fran�ois]
>>There was a discussion on the Python list, last week, on the fact that
>these
>operators do not have a clear intuitive meaning, even in English.
I'm not sure I agree with Fran�ois here. There are not Enlish words, but
logical operators, and anyone familiar with symbolic logic would know that
their meaning is defined in terms of truth tables, e.g.
A B AND
--------
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
>Many years ago, in a "natural-language"-to-data-base interface, just to
play (I
>know, it was vicious), I asked the following natural language sentence to
the
>program called "Intellect" (at the time, it was on an IBM mainframe): "How
many
>men and women are listed in the database?"... After many minutes going
trough a
>relatively big database, I got the single answer: 0 (i.e. ZERO)... (%=
[snip]
> it was not very
>clever programming... However how many users would believe what a machine
would
>answer in those occasions? Unfortunately most non-programmers, to whatever
>question.
>
>That is the problem I see. A big one. So yes, operators should be
translated,
>explained, and even presented to end-users with a tutorial explaining the
usual
>traps. This, even for English-speaking end-users. It is a matter of good
>user-machine interface. The user must be aware in advance of the kind of
>commitment he/she has contracted with the machine. So far we assume too
much on
>both sides (programmers and end-users), only the machine is
strightforward...
>"Garbage in, garbage out" is still quite of age.
Now this is a different matter, and I definitely agree with Fran�ois here.
But this is talking about natural language words, not operators of logical
logic.
Peter Constable
