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

[Bernard Vatant]

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