superdan wrote:
> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
> 
>> superdan wrote:
>>> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
>>>
>>>> superdan wrote:
>>>>> Manfred_Nowak Wrote:
>>>>>> Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer for the immidiately rising question what the restriction of a finite computational basis implies for computational hard/intractable problems.
>>>>> and care to explain how exactly what you said is not balderdash laminated in elevated words.
>>>> Because I'm reading the document and it has mathematical proofs as well as numerous (about 133) citations to works widely regarded as fact.
>>>>
>>>> Read before declaring it BS.  Otherwise we have to refer you the dictionary under the entry of "bigotry" for your information.
>>> no you read before telling me to read before declaring it bs. gotta put you in my dictionary under "confused" eh. question was addressed to manfred.
>> State of reading.  I'm not declaring it anything until I'm done reading, and it's more than a little rash to jump to the "balderdash" conclusion without reading it.
>>
>> Less than half the time more than half of me is inclined to agree with your classification of myself.
>>
>>> fwiw i think stepanov is an intercoursin' mad genius. thanx andrei for the link. you're mah nigga!
>> He certainly knows how to write in a manner which encourages me to think he's smart.  Whether or not he's got anything worth noting I have not personally verified yet.  If he bothered to distill his research into more layman's terms I'd be able to get through it much faster and without the constant work of all the careful reading.
>>
>>
>> Moral of these three posts: bsing anything creates more bs than there was to begin with.
> 
> very confused eh. but don't you worry my friend. won't let you down. i'll explain again.
> 
> manfred said:
> 
> "Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer for the immidiately rising question what the restriction of a finite computational basis implies for computational hard/intractable problems."
> 
> that did not make sense to me. so i wrote him back:
> 
> "and care to explain how exactly what you said is not balderdash laminated in elevated words."
> 
> because that's what seemed to me. computational basis has nothing to do with intractable problems as far as i see both. notice that i used `you' meaning `you mr. manfred novak born in plzen on march 5th 1979, owning a pink pet rock and an autograph from weird al'. capisci? so the balderdash thing was about manfred's words not the ones in the book.
> 
> hope this clears the skies.

Like taking down the Hindenburgh!  Man.. I thought you were calling the research paper BS...  English has too great a potential for ambiguity. Someone should make a second version which fixes this bug ;^)

> now onto some actual content. i am also reading thru the doc and i think the man is not spilling just verbose prolix bs. like for example matt wilson does (man am i happy he stayed with c++ and left d alone).
> 
> i don't think he can lower level much more before losing precision. take for example his uniquely represented stuff on page 2-3. the notion rang to me instantly because in the past i'd been bit by such issues with 1's complement and floating point nums. if he wanted to give up on the uniquely represented term then he'd have to give up on the entire idea of unique representation. but then he can'd build on that anymore so all of his algos and stuff lose substance and will sometimes not work. because many algos do assume unique representation or other stuff he defines.
> 
> to me stepanov's art is to put in the clear things that were subliminal.

Still largely incomprehensible to me, but I'm trying to work my way through it.  My disadvantage is having not yet taken Calculus (taking precalc right now though!)  Much of his math is using notations that are very foreign to me, so I constantly have to look them up myself!  Ah, it's like reading Knuth all over again... only shorter.

Manfred_Nowak wrote:
> Alix Pexton wrote:
> 
>> If I find myself needing to regularly get the nth item from a
>> linked list I would start to ask myself why I was using a list in
>> the first place. 
> 
> What is a "linked list"?
> 
> This question is motivated by your stated incompatibility of the "get the nth item"-operation with a "linked list". I do not see such an incompatibility.
> 
> -manfred
> 
 Of course you can get the nth item from a list, but it is not efficient. There are
other data structures that are more efficient for indexing (usually at the expense
of requiring more space.)

A...

superdan wrote:

>> Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer for the immidiately rising question what the restriction of a finite computational basis implies for computational hard/intractable problems.
[...]
> please explain it to me.

Every natural number has a prime factorization and the set of prime numbers is infinite. Therefore: if one is restricted to a finite set of prime numbers for the use in a prime factorization then there exist natural numbers for which one will not be able to build a prime factorization, based on the given restricted set.

My prerequisite for the citation above was "If an analogy to numbers is allowed [...]". Under this prerequisite and the contents of the paragraph immediately above, one would be allowed to conclude:

| for _some_ given specification of a type `T', the restriction of a | finite computational basis for `T' might imply, that there exist | problems based on the specification of `T', that cannot be solved | efficiently by using that _finite_ basis

If the word "some" above can be generalized to "any", then this would be a severe strike into the face of the fans of the reusable components view on programming, to which Stepanov belongs. However, if one stays with the "some", then one has to give criteria on how one can decide whether a given specification is efficiently fulfillable with a finite computational basis.

Those that are considered not fulfillable by a finite basis might be those, which are considered hard or intractable in the known sense.

I am quite surprised, that hard/intractable problems might show up on something I considered mostly harmless until reading Stepanov: the specification of a type, for which a finite computational basis is known.


A simple solution would be, that my prerequisite "analogy to numbers" is disallowed, but I do not see any obvious reason for this disallowance and I would be glad, if Stepanov would provide some guidance. Therefore:

| Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer ...

-manfred



-- 
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Alix Pexton wrote:

> Of course

I do not see the answer to my question in your replay; same holds for Don.

So I repeat my question with some words Stepanov might use:

What is the specification for the type T="linked list" or T="list"?

Without such a specification every musing on functions/procedures is forlorn hope in the framework of Stepanov.

-manfred


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If life is going to exist in this Universe, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. (Douglas Adams)

On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:50:52 -0400, Manfred_Nowak <svv1999@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Alix Pexton wrote:
>
>> Of course
>
> I do not see the answer to my question in your replay; same holds for
> Don.
>
> So I repeat my question with some words Stepanov might use:
>
> What is the specification for the type T="linked list" or T="list"?
>
> Without such a specification every musing on functions/procedures is
> forlorn hope in the framework of Stepanov.
>
> -manfred

Manfred, it sounds like you want the definition of a linked list, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list

Robert Jacques wrote:

> see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list

Sorry, no. That describes what a _data structure_ named "linked list" might look like, but no "specification of a type" in Stepanovs sense.

-manfred

-- 
If life is going to exist in this Universe, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. (Douglas Adams)