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Re: Re: Replace and ReplaceAll -- simple application

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg106132] Re: [mg106115] Re: Replace and ReplaceAll -- simple application
• From: DrMajorBob <btreat1 at austin.rr.com>
• Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 05:06:21 -0500 (EST)
• References: <201001011039.FAA05500@smc.vnet.net>
• Reply-to: drmajorbob at yahoo.com

> ...since replacing one thing with another is
> not mathematics...

It's what a mathematician spends much of his time doing, I'd say.

Bobby

On Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:39:36 -0600, Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>  
wrote:

> On 12/31/09 at 3:13 AM, fateman at cs.berkeley.edu (Richard Fateman)
> wrote:
>
>> No, I think it is not masochism. It is an attempt to provide a
>> useful to answer questions that come up from time to time from
>> people who would otherwise dismiss a CAS as useless and stupid
>> bedause they find unexplainable (to them) behavior.
>
>> Some posts explains that a CAS really could do the mathematically
>> obviously correct thing, even if it appears they do not.
>
> But using pattern matching to do replacements is not doing mathematics.
>
>> They may point out that a group of fans insists that the right thing
>> for users to do is to discard their mathematically obvious
>> understanding and study programming.
>
>> But when the weight of all mathematical obviousness is on one side,
>> and the developers could fix a bug but simply refuse to do so, then
>> that is simply stubbornness.
>
> Do you have some definition for "bug" other than performance in
> a manner different than documented?
> That is, failure of any software to do what a user expects is
> certainly not a bug if that is what the software is documented
> to do.
>
> The key problem here is a novice user of Mathematica might think
> of using replacement rules as doing mathematics. That simply
> isn't the case. And since replacing one thing with another is
> not mathematics, insisting the result makes sense mathematically
> simply isn't a realistic expectation.
>
>


-- 
DrMajorBob at yahoo.com

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Replace and ReplaceAll -- simple application
    • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz@mimuw.edu.pl>

• References:
  • Re: Replace and ReplaceAll -- simple application
    • From: Bill Rowe <readnews@sbcglobal.net>