Tangled Bank #59

[brokenhut]

My submission to Tangled Bank #59 was accepted, and you can read all the science at this week's host site.

The editor did mention one peeve of his, which I am sympathetic to - discussion of maths subjects without any mention of maths. The author of Good Math, Bad Math has a mantra about the worst mathematics being no mathematics, because without

Comments

[zootm]

I think it's fair point. Mathematical concepts often mis-represented by metaphors and it can end up being kinda damaging to the reader's understanding. For example, to use your metaphor (not meaning to be overly-critical), the most important things about hash functions is that they are a small piece of information which identify a much larger piece, which fits the fingerprinting metaphor, but also that if the information changes the hash changes with it, usually by a large degree, which doesn't. Chopping off someone's head will not change their fingerprint - it's important that people note that opening a file, changing it, and saving it will change its hash, this is one of the largest uses of hashes. For the record, using your article as an example isn't great (fingerprints do fit well in that context), but it's important to note that there's a lot of things about maths and computing that are not obvious to those who are not familiar with those areas (like a file's data changing making that file an entirely different file) and

[zootm]

Jesus, that really needs a paragraph break.

[brokenhut]

I agree entirely with the guy's point but I don't know I can do it justice without turning people away. That is the biggest disadvantage of the intuitionist approach to explanations like this.

I'll continue playing with ideas in order to give the right impression and not deceive. But, to echo the carnival's guest editor, "writing is haaaard!". :) Maybe I should set up a separate site devoted to this (get a blogspot account or something) so I don't have to annoy people with technical stuff here?

[zootm]

I like your technical stuff, it's brought me pretty close to writing stuff like that of my own, I'd request that if you do move it somewhere that you'd leave an LJ feed at least.

Writing is hard though. Writing the sort of "instructive" thing you've been writing is quite challenging, and I'm sure it'll improve with time.

Perhaps I should use zootm.co.uk for this sort of thing, actually.

[angelscat]

I think some amount of mathematics is essential when dealing with some "hard" subjects. Many things are far from intuitive, so analogies don't always work well, and without some equations, they quickly becomes too abstract to understand. IMHO it is helpful to have some examples when talking about hash functions--the mathematics isn't too hard, and without such "mathematical" examples, we would only have a ton of abstract concepts and strange analogies, which would be incomprehensible to most, even those with good mathematical backgrounds. Another example is modern physics, such as quantum mechanics and special relativity. There are lots of popular science books on these, and although they are quite enjoyable to read, they tend to produce a lot of confusions. An undergraduate-level textbook works much better.