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> irritatingly pedantic people Scientists. Scientists find issue with that sentence. People who care about scientific integrity within the computer science fie

by junon 4y ago

> irritatingly pedantic people Scientists. Scientists find issue with that sentence. People who care about scientific integrity within the computer science field.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
I'm a computer scientist with degrees and stuff, and I don't mind. I believe this is an example of the proof being in the pudding? By coincidence I just wrote a proprietary serialization format a few months ago for work, and it's proven to be 42x better than flat-buffers, depth-buffers, proto-buffers and even the equivalent electro-buffers. Unless you care about average space efficiency, then it's worse probably!
- junon 4y ago
  Having degrees doesn't mean you are the arbiter of science.
  - erichocean 4y ago
    I guess you've demonstrated his "irritatingly pedantic people" point. Was that intentional? If so, well done!
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      My comment was indeed intentionally satirical.
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
Here is the dictionary definition of proven: > proven > adjective > demonstrated by evidence or argument to be true or existing. Looked for some random news article and found "Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again", "India's Toy Sector Proven Its Mettle By Transforming Itself". None of these are wrong usage.
- samatman 4y ago
  What remarkable bad faith. Here's the search you got that from: https://www.google.com/search?q=proven+definition https://www.google.com/search?q=proven+definition And right underneath we see > (of a new method, system, or treatment) tried and tested. Which undermines your argument, so I can see why you left it out, but this was easy homework to check.
  - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    With many definitions, it means any definition is acceptable. If one entry in dictionary satisfies usage, it is correct usage. Also "tried and tested" is not same as mathematical proof, but any of those three usage are fine according to most.
jrockway 4y ago
You can't justify this one with the "no true scotsman" fallacy. If you do a test that shows that X is faster than Y, you're allowed to say "X proved faster than Y". You're equally allowed to say "merge sort is proven to sort any list with an upper bound of n log n comparisons" after you write up a mathematical proof of that. (But welcome to the sadness of the real world, where the running time of a sort might not be slow because of the number of comparisons, but "real world" annoyances like cache hit rate.) HN is largely software engineering practitioners. Practice is one level of complexity above the mathematics; among the mathematically optimal solutions to a problem, you have to find the one that's actually fastest on some sort of computer you can buy. Otherwise the math is just an interesting fact to throw out at parties. Testing in the real world is really the only way to find the solution that is fastest in the real world, but of course, mathematics dramatically limits the search space for the ideal algorithm. Basically, farmers aren't interested in how much milk a spherical cow can produce. There are no spherical cows.
- junon 4y ago
  It's not proven. You've demonstrated it was faster on your machine. That's the end of it. From a CS perspective, you've not proven anything at all. You've also completely misrepresented my point. It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, at all. Not sure what spherical cows have anything to do with anything.
  - nick__m 4y ago
    Do you know that a word can have a different meaning in a different context? You describe a formal proof but the Collin dictionary define proof that way : Proof is a fact, argument, or *piece of evidence* which shows that something is definitely true or definitely exists. That demonstration is a piece of evidence that shows that an algorithm is truly faster on that computer with that specific input, sure it's not a formal generalizable CS proof but it a valid usage of the word proven nonetheless.
    - junon 4y ago
      Yes, clearly I'm aware of that. In the context of computer science, it is not proven.

by junon 4y ago

> irritatingly pedantic people Scientists. Scientists find issue with that sentence. People who care about scientific integrity within the computer science field.

sgtnoodle 4y ago

I'm a computer scientist with degrees and stuff, and I don't mind. I believe this is an example of the proof being in the pudding? By coincidence I just wrote a proprietary serialization format a few months ago for work, and it's proven to be 42x better than flat-buffers, depth-buffers, proto-buffers and even the equivalent electro-buffers. Unless you care about average space efficiency, then it's worse probably!

junon 4y ago
Having degrees doesn't mean you are the arbiter of science.
- erichocean 4y ago
  I guess you've demonstrated his "irritatingly pedantic people" point. Was that intentional? If so, well done!
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    My comment was indeed intentionally satirical.

YetAnotherNick 4y ago

Here is the dictionary definition of proven: > proven > adjective > demonstrated by evidence or argument to be true or existing. Looked for some random news article and found "Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again", "India's Toy Sector Proven Its Mettle By Transforming Itself". None of these are wrong usage.

samatman 4y ago
What remarkable bad faith. Here's the search you got that from: https://www.google.com/search?q=proven+definition https://www.google.com/search?q=proven+definition And right underneath we see > (of a new method, system, or treatment) tried and tested. Which undermines your argument, so I can see why you left it out, but this was easy homework to check.
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  With many definitions, it means any definition is acceptable. If one entry in dictionary satisfies usage, it is correct usage. Also "tried and tested" is not same as mathematical proof, but any of those three usage are fine according to most.

jrockway 4y ago

You can't justify this one with the "no true scotsman" fallacy. If you do a test that shows that X is faster than Y, you're allowed to say "X proved faster than Y". You're equally allowed to say "merge sort is proven to sort any list with an upper bound of n log n comparisons" after you write up a mathematical proof of that. (But welcome to the sadness of the real world, where the running time of a sort might not be slow because of the number of comparisons, but "real world" annoyances like cache hit rate.) HN is largely software engineering practitioners. Practice is one level of complexity above the mathematics; among the mathematically optimal solutions to a problem, you have to find the one that's actually fastest on some sort of computer you can buy. Otherwise the math is just an interesting fact to throw out at parties. Testing in the real world is really the only way to find the solution that is fastest in the real world, but of course, mathematics dramatically limits the search space for the ideal algorithm. Basically, farmers aren't interested in how much milk a spherical cow can produce. There are no spherical cows.

junon 4y ago
It's not proven. You've demonstrated it was faster on your machine. That's the end of it. From a CS perspective, you've not proven anything at all. You've also completely misrepresented my point. It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, at all. Not sure what spherical cows have anything to do with anything.
- nick__m 4y ago
  Do you know that a word can have a different meaning in a different context? You describe a formal proof but the Collin dictionary define proof that way : Proof is a fact, argument, or *piece of evidence* which shows that something is definitely true or definitely exists. That demonstration is a piece of evidence that shows that an algorithm is truly faster on that computer with that specific input, sure it's not a formal generalizable CS proof but it a valid usage of the word proven nonetheless.
  - junon 4y ago
    Yes, clearly I'm aware of that. In the context of computer science, it is not proven.