Ed, William, and Sjir, (01)
EB
> I see data as the information that is represented by the marks,
> and you see data as the marks that convey information. We label
> different roles in the same relationship as "data", but we both
> demand that the relationship exists in the eye of the reader. (02)
I more or less agree. But that discussion shows that the terms
'data' and 'information' are more difficult to define than the
the more basic triad of mark, token, type. (03)
EB
> It is not sufficient that those marks have an interpretation. If the
> writing on the page is in Mayan, it is not "data" for you; it is just
> marks. Those marks are only data when you can read them. Reading is
> the mental transformation from marks to meaning. (04)
Peirce emphasized that every perception of a mark is a classification
as a token of some type. An early explorer who described carvings on
a Mayan wall couldn't read them as a language, but the descriptions
could still be called data. (05)
In fact, much of the early "data" proved to be quite useful for
the linguists who finally decoded the glyphs. All the partial
interpretations along the way could be called data. (06)
WF
> ... by the time we are doing data processing, we know what those bits
> in the computer represent, a number, a character, a truth value, a color... (07)
I agree. But you can recognize bits as data of some kind, even if you
don't know which bit patterns represent tokens of which types. When
you look at a raw bit string, you're like an early explorer looking
at glyphs on a Mayan wall. (08)
SN
> I believe the term Conceptual Schema (Complete truly Conceptual Data Model)
> as introduced in ISO TR9007 is quite precise. (09)
I agree that it's a good report. It's over 25 years old, but ISO still
charges 210 Swiss francs for a PDF. Is there any way to persuade them
to release it? (I received a copy years ago from one of the authors.) (010)
SN
> I recommend to this forum to give priority to a better set of definitions
> of ontology... (011)
I agree that clarification is desirable, but with many qualifications. (012)
Absolute precision in the general terminology of any science is not
achievable or even desirable. For example, biology is the science
that studies life, but nobody has a precise, general definition of
life. We could define all known life forms by requiring some version
of RNA or DNA. But that definition would probably be useless for
recognizing life forms outside earth. (013)
For computer examples, the term 'operating system' originated with the
mainframes of the 1960s. But today, an Android smartphone contains
a Linux kernel, and it's still possible to run Linux programs on it.
How would a definition of OS from the 1960s apply? (014)
SN
> A good theory and engineering practice can only be built on
> a much more precise definition than used so far. (015)
I agree that each theory requires precise definitions. But as the
theories evolve, the same words are used, but the definitions change. (016)
In physics, the concepts and definitions of mass, energy, time,
and space have undergone major revisions since the 17th century.
But we still use the same words, and we still use Newton's
equations for the motions of macroscopic bodies on earth. (017)
Scientists and engineers continue to use the same terms, even though
they use different definitions and approximations for different
problems. In fact, engineers routinely use *inconsistent*
approximations for different aspects of the same system. (018)
Basic principle: For each application of each theory, the
terms must have the same definition throughout the computation.
But large applications can and *must* use the same terms with
different definitions in different parts of the system. (019)
John (020)
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