Re: Fonts, Formats, and examples as learning tools
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg113658] Re: Fonts, Formats, and examples as learning tools
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 05:00:51 -0500 (EST)
I believe one of the factors involved here is that TableForm is an older
function, and that Row and Column (and, more generally, Grid) appeared
only in more recent Mathematica versions -- although in some form they
clearly had to be working behind the scenes before.
On 11/5/2010 6:11 AM, AES wrote:
> In article<iatt31$egu$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
> Murray Eisenberg<murray at math.umass.edu> wrote:
>
>> I tried it and got exactly what I expected, including having the input
>> spit back at me when I used RowForm (since there is no such built-in
>> Mathematica function).
>
> Consistency -- for the reasons stated.
>
> By the way, Column appears to yield the same default vertical spacing
> between elements as does TableForm. So, I'd assume Row also yields the
> same default horizontal spacing between elements as does TableForm?
>
> I can appreciate that some applications might routinely want zero
> horizontal spacing in a Row; but then others might not. In fact, many
> might expect that Row[{a,b,c,d}] and Row[{ab,cd}] ought to come out
> looking different, at least in the default case. Anyone who wants to
> can of course then easily reduce this spacing to zero.
>
> Given the natural similarities between rows, columns, and tables in
> everyday life, might it have been sensible to build Mathematica using a
> basic structure in which Row, Column, and Table all had consistent
> iterators, and RowForm, ColumnForm and TableForm all were formats or
> "wrappers"?
>
> Maybe there are subtleties that would make this difficult -- but maybe
> not.
>
>
>> What were _you_ expecting, and why?
>>
>> On 11/3/2010 3:57 AM, AES wrote:
>>> In response to a query about Fonts and Formats, Bob Hanlon
>>> <hanlonr at cox.net> suggests the example:
>>>
>>>> Style["This is a test of various fonts 0123456789",
>>>> FontFamily -> #, 18]& /@
>>>> {"American Typewriter", "Arial",
>>>> "Papyrus", "Playbill", "Webdings",
>>>> "Zapf Dingbats"} // Column
>>>
>>> I was intrigued by the "// Column" suffix -- a usage I had not
>>> previously encountered.
>>>
>>> And, it took my mind back to a couple of recent threads where posters
>>> enthused over 'examples' as a desirable form of documentation, and as a
>>> good way of learning the intricacies of Mathematica.
>>>
>>> My (unposted) reaction at that time had been that examples can give you
>>> good bits of code, which you can copy and use immediately; but they can
>>> also be a *bad* (or at best misleading) way of learning Mathematica,
>>> because of the human tendency to think that if some particular coding
>>> gimmick works in one example, it's likely to work in other apparently
>>> similar or parallel situations -- in other words, the natural human
>>> tendency to generalize.
>>>
>>> The above example provides a beautiful example of this. Try copying it
>>> and executing it six consecutive times, replacing the word 'Column"
>>> successively by
>>>
>>> Row, RowForm, Column, ColumnForm, Table, TableForm
>>>
>>> [and, as always, make your own prediction *in advance* as to what's
>>> going to happen in each case.]
>>>
>
--
Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305