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represent an official company view. (01)
John, (02)
Thanks for your reply. My point was not so much that students
didn't need the skills, but rather that the traditional forms by which
they were taught have been superseded by clearer modern forms and
notations - e.g. the traditional syllogism can be mostly replaced by set
theory. Perhaps they are too clear, and people forget that they need to
be taught. My own specification for when we advertise jobs is for
"joined up thinking", rather than any specific qualification. (03)
Sean Barker
BAE SYSTEMS - Advanced Technology Centre
Bristol, UK
+44(0) 117 302 8184 (04)
BAE Systems (Operations) Limited
Registered Office: Warwick House, PO Box 87, Farnborough Aerospace
Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU, UK
Registered in England & Wales No: 1996687 (05)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: 02 June 2008 14:10
> To: Barker, Sean (UK)
> Cc: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Data Models v. Ontologies (again)
>
>
> *** WARNING ***
>
> This mail has originated outside your organization, either
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> Keep this in mind if you answer this message.
>
> Sean,
>
> If you want to show people a basic summary of set theory,
> modern logic, and related topics in about 30 pages, see my
> tutorial, which has had 81,268 downloads as of this morning:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/logic/math.htm
>
> This is the kind of material that most people who have had a
> course on modern math and logic are supposed to know.
>
> > ... a basic textbook of traditional logic, as at least >
> exemplified by the basic texts of Port Royale school, takes
> > several hours to read, but can be re-written as statements
> > in set theory that take only a few minutes to understand.
>
> My objection is to the last word "understand". People who
> have mastered every topic that I summarize in my 30-page
> tutorial have some useful background. But they still do not
> understand how to use it to analyze statements in ordinary
> language and map them to logic.
>
> I had a bit of discussion with Chris M. and Pat H. about the
> so-called professor mentioned by Doug Lenat. Since that is a
> summary of what I heard from somebody else, I cannot vouch
> for all the details. However, I have met people who took
> courses in modern logic at prestigious universities who
> cannot translate a few sentences (nothing tricky) from English to FOL.
>
> I taught a course a while ago, which had the prerequisites
> "knowledge of first-order logic and natural language syntax".
> Following is the course description:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/su309a.pdf
> Course 309a: Conceptual Structures
>
> For the first homework exercise, I assigned ten English
> sentences to be translated to FOL. Only one person got all
> ten correct.
> He was a post-doc who was just auditing the course. The best
> score by any student who was taking it for credit was 7 out of 10.
>
> > Also, in Terry Eagleton's "Literary Criticism" from the
> 1980's, > a plea is made to return the focus of university
> courses in English > to rhetoric. My suspicion is that in
> practice this plea has been > usurped by "Media Studies",
> now one of the most derided qualifications > in the UK.
>
> Any course with the title "Media Studies" is guaranteed to be
> fluff, one step beneath basket weaving (which at least has
> some technical content).
>
> Sister Miriam's course was not fluff, and I would recommend
> her book to anybody who has taken a course in modern
> predicate calculus.
>
> John
>
>
> (06)
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