Math and Search Experts
May 10, 2015
I found “There’s More to Mathematics Than Rigor and Proofs” a useful reminder between the the person who is comfor4table with math and the person who asserts he is good in math. With more search and content processing embracing numerical recipes, the explanations of what a math centric system can do often leave me rolling my eyes and, in some cases, laughing out loud.
This essay explains that time and different types of math experiences are necessary stages in developing a useful facility with some of today’s information retrieval systems and methods. The write up points out:
The distinction between the three types of errors can lead to the phenomenon (which can often be quite puzzling to readers at earlier stages of mathematical development) of a mathematical argument by a post-rigorous mathematician which locally contains a number of typos and other formal errors, but is globally quite sound, with the local errors propagating for a while before being cancelled out by other local errors. (In contrast, when unchecked by a solid intuition, once an error is introduced in an argument by a pre-rigorous or rigorous mathematician, it is possible for the error to propagate out of control until one is left with complete nonsense at the end of the argument.)
Perhaps this section of the article sheds some light on the content processing systems which wander off the track of relevance and accuracy? As my mathy relative Vladimir Igorevich Arnold was fond of saying to anyone who would listen: Understand first, then talk.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2015
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