John F. Sowa wrote:
> Martin,
>
> People have been successfully using units of measure for centuries
> without having formal definitions and axioms.
> (01)
People, yeah. Computers have a nice history of catastrophies. Even people
sometimes fail. A friend of mine worked at a catering company. She received
calls from other people who failed to say whether the 10 by 20 was in feet or
yards and width by length or length by width.
People succeed because they implicitly know what quantity is being talked
about and whether the respective quantities are the same kind of quantity.
This implicit information has to be explicitly available for computers. If you
don't offer this information then ... well ... bring up your favorite failure
of adding acceleration to velocity and crashing something or whatever rocks
your cradle. (02)
> (...)
> 2. If VIM does define some term that is needed for UoM, then
> restate the VIM definition in whatever version of logic
> we use, but don't add more detail. (03)
Ergo, kind of quantity is a must. (04)
Regards, (05)
-Martin (06)
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