* Gareth McCaughan | I'd expect "comparand", by analogy with "operand" and "multiplicand" and so | on.
I briefly considered it, could not find it, went back to my Latin books and thought I had derived "comparend" correctly. (Perhaps it is the correct word for something else. Latin is like that.)
| (Exercise for the reader: work out why I think "multiplicand" a better model | than "addend".)
I would appreciate if you explained this, instead, since I already thought I had worked it out.
| I think I'd say that it *is* a word, even though it isn't in any dictionary I | possess. It can be formed using a fairly standard process from an existing | word, so it's a word.
Well, I know a bunch of lexicographers from my SGML days, and have access to *huge* citation databases. Neither "comparend" or "comparand" have been noted in them as sufficiently well established to be recognized neologisms, but it is of course invalid to reason from absence of information.
| I get 973 hits for "comparand" at Google.
Google is an interesting form of democracy in action. It is where I would go to confirm that a majority of people I know nothing about other than that they chose to use the same words I searched for believe something to be so. Considering the staggering amount of crappy disinformation that gets posted and published on the Net, the preponderance of nutcases who use USENET in preference to real publishers and the general degeneration of language used on-line, I am hard pressed to believe a google search more authoritative than polling people at the mall. (This cynic opinion has been formed after many a discussion with several of the people behind Alltheweb.)
Incidentally, if you ask for pages that Google consider "English", the number of hits for comparand drops to 621 and if they are required to be located in the United States, it drops to 407. In other words, 58% of the raw hits are not in English and not "in" the United States. I think this is very relevant information in addition to the raw count.
However, after I have talked with search engine people, I have concluded that the only actual question google and the like can answer is "is it part of the mainstream?", or rephrased "how many people agree with me?" This is, in my not at all humble opinion, _the_ most extremely irrelevant question. Worse, after the United States of America managed to elect George W. Bush, which was frightening enough by itself, even more people contributed to high approval ratings for that emotional bozo, and my trust in the majority of the American people's ability to get anythying right dropped to the same level as the disapproval rating of that real-life version of Anakin from Star Wars episode II. I considered switching to a British accent and spelling just to distance myself from the distastefulness of such cluelessness on a national scale. So for now, "X number of Americans prefer this" is only disqualifying. I mean, when people can seriously argue that George W. Bush is a _leader_ when he clearly only parrots the last smart person he has had in his office, there goes my trust in _their_ thinking ability, too. When you have ousted that stupid child from office and put someone with enough brains to be predictable and actually hold a thought and argue coherently without script, I may once again consider the American public and its opinions worthy of attention. Until then, I am predisposed to be most skeptical of Google results, too. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business offer, please be specific and do not put "business offer" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes: > * Gareth McCaughan > | I'd expect "comparand", by analogy with "operand" and "multiplicand" and so > | on.
> I briefly considered it, could not find it, went back to my Latin books and > thought I had derived "comparend" correctly. (Perhaps it is the correct word > for something else. Latin is like that.)
Well, "comparandi" is correct Italian, and it derives - of course - from Latin.
Cheers
-- Marco Antoniotti ======================================================== NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488 719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122 New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu "Hello New York! We'll do what we can!" Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
> * Gareth McCaughan > | I'd expect "comparand", by analogy with "operand" and "multiplicand" and so > | on.
> I briefly considered it, could not find it, went back to my Latin books and > thought I had derived "comparend" correctly. (Perhaps it is the correct word > for something else. Latin is like that.)
Check the gerundives.
-ando is the suffix for adjectives formed from verbs ending in -are (like comparare), -(i)endo is for verbs in -ere and -ire (like addere).
Well, it is correct Italian in the sense that you can use this word and you will be understood; but it is is no Italian dictionary¹. Just like in English.
* "Pierpaolo BERNARDI" <pierpaolo_berna...@hotmail.com> | Check the gerundives. | | -ando is the suffix for adjectives formed from verbs ending in -are | (like comparare), -(i)endo is for verbs in -ere and -ire (like addere).
Oh, damn. I based my analysis on compareo, not comparo. The former means to appear, be visible, to exist, be present, and is indeed comparere, while the latter means to form into pairs, match, and hence compare in English, and is comparare. Thanks for the push to go check this properly. -- Guide to non-spammers: If you want to send me a business proposal, please be specific and do not put "business proposal" in the Subject header. If it is urgent, do not use the word "urgent". If you need an immediate answer, give me a reason, do not shout "for your immediate attention". Thank you.
On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 03:48:46 GMT, "Robert Monfera" <monf...@fisec.com> wrote:
> The Mayans treated themselves, or more accurately, their kids, this way. > There are two head shape designs I know of. I have a photo of a drawing of > a child-on-the-press if anybody is interested. My impression was that the > goal was beauty or handsomeness. Does anyone know the achieved behavioral > alteration?
Erik Naggum wrote: > * Gareth McCaughan > | I'd expect "comparand", by analogy with "operand" and "multiplicand" and so > | on.
> I briefly considered it, could not find it, went back to my Latin books and > thought I had derived "comparend" correctly. (Perhaps it is the correct word > for something else. Latin is like that.)
> | (Exercise for the reader: work out why I think "multiplicand" a better model > | than "addend".)
> I would appreciate if you explained this, instead, since I already thought I > had worked it out.
"comparara" -> "comparandum", like "multiplicare" -> "multiplicandum". "addere" -> "addendum", on the other hand.
> | I think I'd say that it *is* a word, even though it isn't in > | any dictionary I possess. It can be formed using a fairly standard > | process from an existing word, so it's a word.
> Well, I know a bunch of lexicographers from my SGML days, and have access to > *huge* citation databases. Neither "comparend" or "comparand" have been > noted in them as sufficiently well established to be recognized neologisms, > but it is of course invalid to reason from absence of information.
I'm not suggesting that maybe "comparand" has been used often enough to make it a word even though your citation databases don't show it. I'm suggesting that something doesn't need to have been used "often enough" in order to be a word; that even if for some reason no one had ever used the plural of (say) "impingement", that wouldn't stop "impingements" being a word.
> | I get 973 hits for "comparand" at Google.
> Google is an interesting form of democracy in action.
[etc]
First-rate rant, well up to your usual high standards. :-) (Note: I do not consider that "rant" implies "incorrect".)
I have much sympathy with your disdain for "democracy in action", but I suspect Google is no worse in this respect than the huge citation databases you mentioned. That is only guesswork, since I don't know what's in them. I also suspect that the kind of person who would think of using a word (or non-word) like "comparand" is relatively unlikely to be a clueless bozo. One of the ten front-page hits from that Google search is from a professional academic linguist.
-- Gareth McCaughan Gareth.McCaug...@pobox.com .sig under construc
| | > The Mayans treated themselves, or more accurately, their kids, this way. | > There are two head shape designs I know of. I have a photo of a drawing of | > a child-on-the-press if anybody is interested. My impression was that the | > goal was beauty or handsomeness. Does anyone know the achieved behavioral | > alteration? | | Maybe they were a bit upset? :)
The little guy looks relaxed, if not downright sleeping. Ahh, maybe it's the artist's interpretation...
> I also feel > there is a large problem with students cheating there way through > there undergrad degree. I do not think it is so bad in the tier 1 > schools (cmu, mit, stanford ...) but where I went cheating was > rampant. The number of unique programs was less then the number of > programs handed in. It was so bad that if a professor really went > after it, it would have ended his ended his/her career there.
> marc
I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
How do you expect thirty students, a number of which are presumably decent coders, to come up with thirty completely unique solutions to a problem of that scale? The solution is obvious to most semi-experienced programmers, and when you folllow a common set of coding conventions that restricts your uniqueness even more. You can't even expect unique variable names from people who speak the same language - you are all naming the SAME THING.
My point being that cheating does not happen nearly as often as people would claim it does, at the undergraduate level.
Also - why the heck should it happen less at MIT than it does at Michigan Technological University. Quite honestly, I would expect it to happen more - MIT students have more at stake.
> I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve > a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature > undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use > the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number > of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
I TA'd an introductory computer course. On most problems there was one `correct' solution and one `working' solution.
As an example, one problem involved an `Eliza' type program. There was a `dictionary' that mapped `I' to `you', `was' to `were' etc. A deliberate bug was introduced by taking each dictionary entry in turn and doing a replace on the input sentence. This caused some of the replacement words to be replaced back to the original.
The `correct' solution was to rework the text replacement algorithm such that each word in the text was considered in turn against the dictionary. About half the students got it.
The `working' solution was to `mark' a word once it was replaced so that replacing only happened once. (A popular marking technique was to put the replacement word in a list. Once the entire dictionary was processed, a subsequent pass would remove the marks by flattening the text.) About a third of the students took this approach.
Then there was the remaining 1/6th of the students that came up with truly bizarre ideas that in general didn't work. My favorite started by creating an inverse dictionary, merging with the original dictionary, sorting the result and removing the duplicates....
>> I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve >> a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature >> undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use >> the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number >> of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
> I TA'd an introductory computer course. On most problems there > was one `correct' solution and one `working' solution.
> As an example, > one problem involved an `Eliza' type program. There was a `dictionary' > that mapped `I' to `you', `was' to `were' etc. A deliberate bug > was introduced by taking each dictionary entry in turn and doing > a replace on the input sentence. This caused some of the > replacement words to be replaced back to the original.
> The `correct' solution was to rework the text replacement algorithm > such that each word in the text was considered in turn against > the dictionary. About half the students got it.
> The `working' solution was to `mark' a word once it was replaced > so that replacing only happened once. (A popular marking technique > was to put the replacement word in a list. Once the entire dictionary > was processed, a subsequent pass would remove the marks by flattening > the text.) About a third of the students took this approach.
> Then there was the remaining 1/6th of the students that came up > with truly bizarre ideas that in general didn't work. My favorite > started by creating an inverse dictionary, merging with the original > dictionary, sorting the result and removing the duplicates....
Most of the people I had were not that smart, pity it would have been entertaining to read.
In article <uhadfbhk209...@corp.supernews.com>, Paul D. Lathrop wrote: > "Marc Spitzer" <m...@oscar.eng.cv.net> wrote in message > news:slrnagdbbi.1fus.marc@oscar.eng.cv.net... >> I also feel >> there is a large problem with students cheating there way through >> there undergrad degree. I do not think it is so bad in the tier 1 >> schools (cmu, mit, stanford ...) but where I went cheating was >> rampant. The number of unique programs was less then the number of >> programs handed in. It was so bad that if a professor really went >> after it, it would have ended his ended his/her career there.
>> marc
> I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve > a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature > undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use > the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number > of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
Call it the diff test. Even if 2 people do exactly the same algorithm, when you run both files through unix's diff program there should be a lot of noise generated. All the layout, style, variable names, editor setting should generate output because people do not write code *exactly* alike, unless their favorite editor is cp. And when I was a TA I saw a good deal of identical stuff. For example I had one group of students turn in a homework with the same wrong problem done in exactly the same incorrect manner.
> How do you expect thirty students, a number of which are presumably decent > coders, to come up with thirty completely unique solutions to a problem of > that scale? The solution is obvious to most semi-experienced programmers, > and when you folllow a common set of coding conventions that restricts your > uniqueness even more. You can't even expect unique variable names from > people who speak the same language - you are all naming the SAME THING.
I do not expect uniq just different, you know different names in the header comments.
> My point being that cheating does not happen nearly as often as people would > claim it does, at the undergraduate level.
Where I was it did, from what I observed and from what I heard from staff/faculty.
> Also - why the heck should it happen less at MIT than it does at Michigan > Technological University. Quite honestly, I would expect it to happen more - > MIT students have more at stake.
Well one reason is that most MIT students have the ability to do the work. And many of the people I was with would have been better off in the history department, but they saw the internet boom complete with stock options and they were gona get some of that. The simple fact that they had absolutely no ability was besides the point.
Also MIT is much less tolerant of cheating then the school where I went.
<pdlat...@chartermi.net> writes: >"Marc Spitzer" <m...@oscar.eng.cv.net> wrote in message >news:slrnagdbbi.1fus.marc@oscar.eng.cv.net... >> I also feel >> there is a large problem with students cheating there way through >> there undergrad degree. I do not think it is so bad in the tier 1 >> schools (cmu, mit, stanford ...) but where I went cheating was >> rampant. The number of unique programs was less then the number of >> programs handed in. It was so bad that if a professor really went >> after it, it would have ended his ended his/her career there.
>> marc
>I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve >a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature >undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use >the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number >of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
The number of appropriate algorithms and even variable names may be quite limited, but white-space arrangement and the way the source is organized can also vary. I'm not sure students, who only take each course one, are in a postion to know how much cheating is going on. But professors should have a pretty good idea.
>How do you expect thirty students, a number of which are presumably decent >coders, to come up with thirty completely unique solutions to a problem of >that scale? The solution is obvious to most semi-experienced programmers, >and when you folllow a common set of coding conventions that restricts your >uniqueness even more. You can't even expect unique variable names from >people who speak the same language - you are all naming the SAME THING.
>My point being that cheating does not happen nearly as often as people would >claim it does, at the undergraduate level.
>Also - why the heck should it happen less at MIT than it does at Michigan >Technological University. Quite honestly, I would expect it to happen more - >MIT students have more at stake.
I think on average MIT students have both more confidence and more ability. The extra ability may be counteracted by there being harder problems, but the confidence should reduce cheating.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
In article <slrnahag7k.9oi.m...@oscar.eng.cv.net>, m...@oscar.eng.cv.net (Marc
Spitzer) writes: >And many of the people I was with would have been better off in >the history department,
Are you sure? I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields where mistakes make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's not to say that their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all in history.
In order to be good in history or social science, you need to be able to construct your own thought experiments and understand the limitations of your data and models. Having a compiler means a lot of fallacies are exposed for you.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
> In article <uhadfbhk209...@corp.supernews.com>, "Paul D. Lathrop" > >I would like to point out that when using a deterministic system to solve > >a well-defined problem, especially a problem of the trivial nature > >undergraduate students are given ("Implement a doubly-linked list. Don't use > >the one that already comes with the language."), there are a limited number > >of solutions. I would even go so far as to say *severely* limited.
> The number of appropriate algorithms and even variable names may be quite > limited, but white-space arrangement and the way the source is organized can > also vary. I'm not sure students, who only take each course one, are in a > postion to know how much cheating is going on. But professors should have a > pretty good idea.
Okay, I admit my experience with different *schools* is quite limited, but when I was student and lab consultant at Michigan Tech., there was a department-wide style guidline that most professors *required* you to follow - removing those white-space arrangement and even organizational differences. I'd send out the link but it appears to have changed since my time there. In any case, I did three years as a lab consultant, all three of which I was also a grader for CS courses. And I saw alot of students working independently in the lab who turned in source code that was nearly identical. Perhaps I had a unique experience?
> >How do you expect thirty students, a number of which are presumably decent > >coders, to come up with thirty completely unique solutions to a problem of > >that scale? The solution is obvious to most semi-experienced programmers, > >and when you folllow a common set of coding conventions that restricts your > >uniqueness even more. You can't even expect unique variable names from > >people who speak the same language - you are all naming the SAME THING.
> >My point being that cheating does not happen nearly as often as people would > >claim it does, at the undergraduate level.
> >Also - why the heck should it happen less at MIT than it does at Michigan > >Technological University. Quite honestly, I would expect it to happen more - > >MIT students have more at stake.
> I think on average MIT students have both more confidence and more ability. The > extra ability may be counteracted by there being harder problems, but the > confidence should reduce cheating.
I think on average the MIT *undergraduate* students I have interacted with do not exhibit either of these traits in greater amounts than the MTU students I have interacted with. There are a few exceptional students, but that applies at both schools. Cheating happens everywhere, but I think it happens less everywhere than people believe. Trust is a rare thing these days, and it's easy to say someone has cheated when you have already condemned them in your mind.
In article <20020623011850.26138.00000...@mb-mm.aol.com>, Dvd Avins wrote: > In article <slrnahag7k.9oi.m...@oscar.eng.cv.net>, > m...@oscar.eng.cv.net (Marc Spitzer) writes:
>>And many of the people I was with would have been better off in >>the history department,
> Are you sure? I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields > where mistakes make themselves felt in immediate results, such as > CS. That's not to say that their worth much in CS, but there worth > nothing at all in history.
remember this is a ba not a phd. These are the people who would be selling insurance straight out of high school, but now they need a college degree to get the same job.
> In order to be good in history or social science, you need to be > able to construct your own thought experiments and understand the > limitations of your data and models. Having a compiler means a lot > of fallacies are exposed for you.
> -- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as > attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
In article <uhanvkb2pdj...@corp.supernews.com>, "Paul D. Lathrop"
<pdlat...@chartermi.net> writes: >Cheating happens everywhere, but I think it >happens less everywhere than people believe. Trust is a rare thing these >days, and it's easy to say someone has cheated when you have already >condemned them in your mind.
All too true.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
> > Then there was the remaining 1/6th of the students that came up > > with truly bizarre ideas that in general didn't work. My favorite > > started by creating an inverse dictionary, merging with the original > > dictionary, sorting the result and removing the duplicates....
> Most of the people I had were not that smart, pity it would have been > entertaining to read.
It was frustrating as hell. The student was stuck because at the point of merging the inverse dictionary he was using APPEND rather than CONS and ending up with some elements being nested. I kept trying to suggest that rather than pursue this path to solution that he re-think what was wrong with the original code. I suggested:
1. The original code *almost* did it correctly, so the working version should be a minor variant on it.
2. The professors, perverse as they were, weren't so perverse as to require a solution that was easily an order of magnitude larger than the original.
3. That even if someone *wanted* to have a solution this difficult, that there wasn't enough lab time for all the students to complete it.
I stated flat out: this is *not* the solution.
His response? ``You don't understand. First, I make an inverse dictionary, then I merge it with the original and sort the result...''
Faced with this idee fixe I did the only thing I could. I told him to replace the APPEND with a CONS and the list would no longer be nested.
The next day he came back with another problem: not only did his new solution exhibit the same double replacement of the old, it had *more* double replacements....
| I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields where mistakes | make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's not to say that | their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all in history.
Consider mistakes in another discipline, grammar - their not a result of mediocre thinking. There therefore worth no mentioning.
>| I find that mediocre thinkers do better in fields where mistakes >| make themselves felt in immediate results, such as CS. That's not to say >that >| their worth much in CS, but there worth nothing at all in history.
>Consider mistakes in another discipline, grammar - their not a result of >mediocre thinking. There therefore worth no mentioning.
Thank you. But are mistakes in vocabulary worth mentioning? Actually, that's the one aspect of typing I don't like. I hate the physical act of writing with a pen, but I don't make stupid mistakes like that except with a keyboard.
-- Attaining and helping others attain "Aha!" experiences, as satisfying as attaining and helping others attain orgasms.
In article <20020623001958.26138.00000...@mb-mm.aol.com>, dvdav...@aol.comNOSPAM (Dvd Avins) writes:
> ... > The number of appropriate algorithms and even variable names may be quite > limited, but white-space arrangement and the way the source is organized can > also vary.
a few years ago i was helping a neighbor who just went through an undergraduate program with an exercise problem he had. the first thing i noticed that with the introductory material they gave very strict rules about how to format the sources, accompanied by the threat that that any deviation from this outlay would be penalized by point deductions. they even included some rules about how to chose variable names. i would submit that something like this would drastically diminish chances of using the criteron you suggested
hs
--
don't use malice as an explanation when stupidity suffices
Uzytkownik "Dvd Avins" <dvdav...@aol.comNOSPAM> napisal w wiadomosci
> The number of appropriate algorithms and even variable names may be quite > limited, but white-space arrangement and the way the source is organized can > also vary. I'm not sure students, who only take each course one, are in a > postion to know how much cheating is going on. But professors should have a > pretty good idea.
Note that all the students who are new to programming will be using the conventions their lecturers taught them, using the editor recommended by those lecturers. How much difference are you going to see then? Not a huge amount.
>> > Then there was the remaining 1/6th of the students that came up >> > with truly bizarre ideas that in general didn't work. My favorite >> > started by creating an inverse dictionary, merging with the original >> > dictionary, sorting the result and removing the duplicates....
>> Most of the people I had were not that smart, pity it would have been >> entertaining to read.
> It was frustrating as hell. The student was stuck because at > the point of merging the inverse dictionary he was using APPEND > rather than CONS and ending up with some elements being nested. > I kept trying to suggest that rather than pursue this path to > solution that he re-think what was wrong with the original code. > I suggested:
> 1. The original code *almost* did it correctly, so the working > version should be a minor variant on it.
> 2. The professors, perverse as they were, weren't so perverse > as to require a solution that was easily an order of magnitude > larger than the original.
> 3. That even if someone *wanted* to have a solution this > difficult, that there wasn't enough lab time for all the > students to complete it.
> I stated flat out: this is *not* the solution.
> His response? ``You don't understand. First, I make an inverse > dictionary, then I merge it with the original and sort the result...''
well that does sound funny If it had happened to me I probably would have chuckled right there and let him go on his way.
> Faced with this idee fixe I did the only thing I could. I told > him to replace the APPEND with a CONS and the list would no longer > be nested.
Well you could have just agreed with him and left him to his own devices.
> The next day he came back with another problem: not only did his > new solution exhibit the same double replacement of the old, it > had *more* double replacements....
Well he said "you did not understand", and he was right. Only he understood. Unfortunately what he understood was not in line with what was actually happening. And he was happier with what he understood over what is, so he stuck with it.
In article <3d163...@news.sentex.net>, Hartmann Schaffer wrote: > In article <20020623001958.26138.00000...@mb-mm.aol.com>, > dvdav...@aol.comNOSPAM (Dvd Avins) writes: >> ... >> The number of appropriate algorithms and even variable names may be quite >> limited, but white-space arrangement and the way the source is organized can >> also vary.
> a few years ago i was helping a neighbor who just went through an > undergraduate program with an exercise problem he had. the first > thing i noticed that with the introductory material they gave very > strict rules about how to format the sources, accompanied by the > threat that that any deviation from this outlay would be penalized by > point deductions. they even included some rules about how to chose > variable names. i would submit that something like this would > drastically diminish chances of using the criteron you suggested
