12 Jul
2006
12 Jul
'06
11:03 a.m.
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 10:44:50AM -0700, Sean Parent wrote:
Mathematicians do not have memory or complexity to deal with (mathematicians don't sort) - so arguing that the lack of a rule in mathematics implies that one shouldn't exist in computer science is vacuous.
That seems to suggest that computer scientists somehow know better than mathematicians about mathematical concepts, which is rather insulting to mathematicians. There is a very good reason why the "rule" (actually a relation) is absent in mathematics: namely that it cannot be defined in a meaningful, useful way, as others have already demonstrated. If it can't be done meaningfully in mathematics, it can't be done meaningfully in computer science either. Paul