Book in the works by Alexander Stepanov

[Chris R. Miller]

superdan wrote:
> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
> 
>> superdan wrote:
>>> Chris R. Miller Wrote:
>>>
>>>> superdan wrote:
>>>>> Manfred_Nowak Wrote:
>>>>>> Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer for the immidiately rising question 
>>>>>> what the restriction of a finite computational basis implies for 
>>>>>> computational hard/intractable problems.
>>>>> and care to explain how exactly what you said is not balderdash laminated in elevated words.
>>>> Because I'm reading the document and it has mathematical proofs as well
>>>> as numerous (about 133) citations to works widely regarded as fact.
>>>>
>>>> Read before declaring it BS.  Otherwise we have to refer you the
>>>> dictionary under the entry of "bigotry" for your information.
>>> no you read before telling me to read before declaring it bs. gotta put you in my dictionary under "confused" eh. question was addressed to manfred. 
>> State of reading.  I'm not declaring it anything until I'm done reading,
>> and it's more than a little rash to jump to the "balderdash" conclusion
>> without reading it.
>>
>> Less than half the time more than half of me is inclined to agree with
>> your classification of myself.
>>
>>> fwiw i think stepanov is an intercoursin' mad genius. thanx andrei for the link. you're mah nigga!
>> He certainly knows how to write in a manner which encourages me to think
>> he's smart.  Whether or not he's got anything worth noting I have not
>> personally verified yet.  If he bothered to distill his research into
>> more layman's terms I'd be able to get through it much faster and
>> without the constant work of all the careful reading.
>>
>>
>> Moral of these three posts: bsing anything creates more bs than there
>> was to begin with.
> 
> very confused eh. but don't you worry my friend. won't let you down. i'll explain again.
> 
> manfred said:
> 
> "Sorrily Stepanov gives no answer for the immidiately rising question what the restriction of a finite computational basis implies for computational hard/intractable problems."
> 
> that did not make sense to me. so i wrote him back:
> 
> "and care to explain how exactly what you said is not balderdash laminated in elevated words."
> 
> because that's what seemed to me. computational basis has nothing to do with intractable problems as far as i see both. notice that i used `you' meaning `you mr. manfred novak born in plzen on march 5th 1979, owning a pink pet rock and an autograph from weird al'. capisci? so the balderdash thing was about manfred's words not the ones in the book.
> 
> hope this clears the skies.

Like taking down the Hindenburgh!  Man.. I thought you were calling the
research paper BS...  English has too great a potential for ambiguity.
Someone should make a second version which fixes this bug ;^)

> now onto some actual content. i am also reading thru the doc and i think the man is not spilling just verbose prolix bs. like for example matt wilson does (man am i happy he stayed with c++ and left d alone).
> 
> i don't think he can lower level much more before losing precision. take for example his uniquely represented stuff on page 2-3. the notion rang to me instantly because in the past i'd been bit by such issues with 1's complement and floating point nums. if he wanted to give up on the uniquely represented term then he'd have to give up on the entire idea of unique representation. but then he can'd build on that anymore so all of his algos and stuff lose substance and will sometimes not work. because many algos do assume unique representation or other stuff he defines.
> 
> to me stepanov's art is to put in the clear things that were subliminal.

Still largely incomprehensible to me, but I'm trying to work my way
through it.  My disadvantage is having not yet taken Calculus (taking
precalc right now though!)  Much of his math is using notations that are
very foreign to me, so I constantly have to look them up myself!  Ah,
it's like reading Knuth all over again... only shorter.

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