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Re: Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg97130] Re: [mg97081] Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for
  • From: DrMajorBob <btreat1 at austin.rr.com>
  • Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 04:23:37 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <200902281142.GAA16641@smc.vnet.net> <godm42$46k$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Reply-to: drmajorbob at bigfoot.com

The database of common errors in Mathematica???

You're looking at it.

Bobby

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:51:54 -0600, peter <plindsay.0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> well, if you make mathematica *too* easy - everyone's going to be using  
> it.
> Then where will we all be ?
> Peter
>
> 2009/3/4 AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
>
>> In article <godm42$46k$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
>>  David Bakin <davidbak at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > DrMajorBob,
>> >
>> > I think you're missing the point here - and actually, this is exactly  
>> the
>> > point that AES keeps banging on.  "It's up to a user to write what he
>> means"
>> > is small comfort to a user, especially one new to Mathematica, who
>> doesn't
>> > know how to express what he means.
>>
>> and can't **easily and quickly** track down that information, in
>> documentation that's **matched to his or her needs**.
>>
>>
>> > "DWIM" is a tongue-in-cheek name, not to be taken literally.  It is  
>> just
>> a
>> > name for an meta-analysis feature that inspects the user's input and
>> > proposes similar input forms that may be closer to what the user has  
>> in
>> > mind, based on a database of common errors.
>>
>> Right.
>>
>> Given the sophistication of everything else that Wolfram does, I assume
>> that it has always done a massive amount of sophisticated user testing,
>> in which it presents its (soft)wares to a wide variety of different
>> kinds of users, and observes and studies what errors they commonly make
>> -- right?
>>
>> (At least it's my understanding that many other companies do this kind
>> of thing, with whatever kind of wares they vend -- right?)
>>
>> So, the above-mentioned "database of common errors" already exists --
>> right?
>>
>>
>
>



-- 
DrMajorBob at bigfoot.com


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