[sc34wg3] Re: Mathematical model (was SAM-issue term-scope-def)

[Ann M Wrightson]

Bernard,

Yes what a thumping bias! Considerable numbers of "formal methods"
practitioners & builders of AI tools ought to be turning in their graves (in
some possible world where they are dead, of course ;-).

<<virtual-snip of comparable polemic in favour of logical theories>>

Let's move forward on the basis that no branch of mathematics and/or logic
(the boundary is a matter for a bar discussion, not this list!!) should be
denied a priori the possibility that it might be useful to us....

In particular, IMO the existence of a hypergraph model, a predicate-logic
style model, and an information flow based model (which is what I hope we
have by next year if Graham & I get enough time to make useful progress)
would be both interesting and helpful.

Ann W.


-----Original Message-----
From: sc34wg3-admin@isotopicmaps.org
[mailto:sc34wg3-admin@isotopicmaps.org]On Behalf Of Bernard Vatant
Sent: 18 July 2002 09:38
To: sc34wg3@isotopicmaps.org
Subject: Re: [sc34wg3] Re: Mathematical model (was SAM-issue
term-scope-def)


Some remarks about logic and maths (very biased, as usual)

*Ann
> > A warning for us is the formal (in the sense of symbolic logic) model of
the
> > ODA standard, which was a nice piece of applied research concerning the
> > logical formalism used (i.e. gained the people involved some good
academic
> > brownie points), but was no good that I ever knew about to anyone
engaged in
> > using the standard.

Maybe we should make distinct our judgement about formal logic models and
applied
mathematical models.
As everyone knows, the former are understood only by those
who were at the Right of God at the very beginning with the Logos (no names
please)
and no real-world industrial application of those is ever seen.
OTOH, the latter are used daily by millions of people dealing with all kind
of science and
engineering.
It's a common place to say that applied maths are science and engineering
"lingua franca",
but yes they are.

*Sam
> A hearty "me too" re: this cautionary tale...
>
> I don't disrespect formalism (or formalisms) but it is important to
> remember that (at least for us) they are and should be means to an end,
> and not ends in themselves.

Agreed. It's anly a tool, so it has to have a definite function. No definite
function, no
tool.

> A lemma to Biezunski's Principle ("There's no point writing a standard
> that noone can understand") would be "as informal as possible -- and no
> more informal" (along the lines of Einstein's "as simple as possible, and
> no simpler." (By "informal" I mean "written in non-obfuscatory prose.")

There I'm not sure I agree. In Einstein's mind, I guess "as simpler as
possible"
meant indeed "as formally elegant as possible" ... if you ever look at
General Relativity
formalism,
you have a taste of what Einstein meant by that ... good luck :)

But that's really what applied maths are, good combination of intuitive
prose in the
definitions and axioms,
and thereafter strong formalism allowing inference and algorithms to yield
efficient
results.

Scientists, engineers and even basic technicians have to get some learning
of applied
maths to be efficient and knowledgeable in their field. Why would not
Knowledge Engineers?
The real issue there is that information science and standards community
have more looked
so far towards formal logic, computational linguistics and the like, than
applied maths
"lingua franca". Too bad ...

Bernard

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