Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other

Post by Grustaf » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #162

kevingadd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

terms like "quick sort" and "map" are actively harmful because what they mean is VERY ambiguous, and in some cases becomes wrong over time. "quick sort" is no longer the quickest sort algorithm by any standard, it happens to just be quicker than some of the algorithms that came before it. "map" tells you nothing about the properties of the data structure other than that it 'maps' keys to values, but even the nuances…

> Calling this narcissism does everyone a significant disservice. It’s not even really narcissism. Here’s the original paper describing what is now called Dijkstra’s Algorithm: http://www-m3.ma.tum.de/foswiki/pub/MN0506/WebHome/dijkstra.... Note that the algorithm isn’t called that anywhere in the paper. In fact, it’s not even named. When other people want to discuss that work, they need to call it something, and som…

Post by toyg » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #164

detaro wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who completed a physics degree has done at least as much math as a CS degree holder, is physics a subfield of math? (I think there is a discussion to be had about making the distinction "CS" vs "theoretical CS" as the GP comment does, or if it should be "CS" vs some other term ("computing"? feels a bit general))

I tried reading "the road to reality" and came to the conclusion that math is physics minus all the boring parts. (Mostly joking. Mostly!)

Post by mwcampbell » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

bsza wrote: post #108

crazygringo wrote: post #55

Hard disagree. Once you get to the advanced levels of any field, terminology being "accessible" doesn't really matter, but being precise does . Areas like philosophy and law actually suffer in my opinion when they overload common words with uncommon meanings, or descend into weird disambiguations that depend on suffixes. For example, in philosophy there's "contractarianism" and "contractualism", and trying to remembe…

People's names can be confused too. A few weeks ago I referred to the Legendre symbol as "Lagrange symbol" by mistake when talking to a colleague. Such things are inevitable however you name things; some words happen to have small Levenshulme-distances...

Post by rrobukef » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

krick wrote: post #174

Well, unless Hairy Ball Theorem is called after her, I don't think it's up to her to decide, what mathematicians "should" do. Jeez, these journalists researching "computational morality"... To be fair, I do actually think some math jargon is unnecessarily complex and we could do better, and that it is something that actually matters. And I do think, for instance, that "commutative group" is better than "abelian group…

Post by dlubarov » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

amw-zero wrote: post #196

Laakeri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science is not a subfield of math. Theoretical computer science is, but there is a lot more to cs than just tcs, for example: operating systems, programming languages, human computer interaction, etc. I agree on your first point though, I think the concepts named after people are usually so abstract that the hard part is to really understand the concepts, not to remember the name.

All of the important ideas in all of the fields that you mentioned have an absolute foundation in math. Just because we are able to work without using math everyday does not reduce the relevance of math to programming at all. Programming is math. I’m not sure why this bothers people so much. When you cross a bridge and it’s able to keep standing, you don’t feel gratitude to math? When you write any program, you shoul…