Comparisons / Matrix
Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:34 pm
Inevitably people try to compare person X to person Y and assert that they are "better".
This is pretty stupid, at least for any non-trivial field of effort. See, any complex field is
going to have many different components, at which people will differ.
Can you smell the vector space sneaking up behind you?
Inevitably, we end up constructing a matrix of N dimensions, and then people try to
take the RMS or the norm of the vector space, to try to reduce it to a single scalar value.
This is a pretty lossy process. A lot of information is lost, creating the inevitable scalar
value that people will only consider, because that is all they are mentally capable of.
A little history lesson:
[quote]Matrices were discovered, or invented if you prefer to see it that way, by the British mathematician [u]Arthur Cayley[/u], who also did pioneering work in group theory and invariant theory.[/quote]
My first cousin (see Wiki-tree) a couple generations back. He was Professor of Maths at Cambridge.
My family is pretty stupid, but we try anyways.
[quote]Cayley became professor of maths there in 1863. He supported the moves to allow women to study at Cambridge University. The first women came in 1869; the first woman to study maths, Sarah Woodhead, did her final exams in 1873. Despite Cayley’s efforts, though, Cambridge University would continue refusing to give degrees to women until 1948.[/quote]
We're not very "woke", though.
This is pretty stupid, at least for any non-trivial field of effort. See, any complex field is
going to have many different components, at which people will differ.
Can you smell the vector space sneaking up behind you?
Inevitably, we end up constructing a matrix of N dimensions, and then people try to
take the RMS or the norm of the vector space, to try to reduce it to a single scalar value.
This is a pretty lossy process. A lot of information is lost, creating the inevitable scalar
value that people will only consider, because that is all they are mentally capable of.
A little history lesson:
[quote]Matrices were discovered, or invented if you prefer to see it that way, by the British mathematician [u]Arthur Cayley[/u], who also did pioneering work in group theory and invariant theory.[/quote]
My first cousin (see Wiki-tree) a couple generations back. He was Professor of Maths at Cambridge.
My family is pretty stupid, but we try anyways.
[quote]Cayley became professor of maths there in 1863. He supported the moves to allow women to study at Cambridge University. The first women came in 1869; the first woman to study maths, Sarah Woodhead, did her final exams in 1873. Despite Cayley’s efforts, though, Cambridge University would continue refusing to give degrees to women until 1948.[/quote]
We're not very "woke", though.