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Fwd: Re: Motion P1788/M0034.01: a conditional NO





-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: Re: Motion P1788/M0034.01: a conditional NO
Datum: Wed, 23 May 2012 12:08:19 +0200
Von: Ulrich Kulisch <ulrich.kulisch@xxxxxxx>
An: John Pryce <j.d.pryce@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Kopie (CC): stds-1788 <stds-1788@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Colleagues:

The e-mail service of my institution (addresses and pass words) has been changed on May 6. So I was unable to contact P1788 between May 6 and today. I am very sorry about that.



Let me now answer John's mail.
John: the last two sentences in your mail below read:

> The term "real interval" means a subset of the reals, not of the extended reals.
> So I think we agree. If so, do you think my notation idea is OK?

> John
Yes, if this is made unambiguously clear to the reader it is okay.
Ulrich







Am 23.05.2012 09:13, schrieb John Pryce:
P1788

I vote NO on this motion. I will change my vote to YES if Ulrich confirms that the motion is consistent with the "I" in IR, \overline{IR}, etc., being an operator. Ideally I would have liked the motion changed to say this, but as we're now in the voting period that would entail withdrawing it, and I don't want to hold things up. So I just seek clarification.

My reasons, stated several times recently, are that at Level 2 it will be very convenient to write stuff like
   \overline{I}(binary64) 
to mean "the inf-sup type derived from IEEE754 binary64", i.e. all real intervals whose bounds are binary64 numbers. 

But the conventions of the motion seem to require introducing a symbol to refer to the format:
   "\overline{IF} where F is the format binary64."
Then, what if we have 3 such types to compare? Do we call them
   "\overline{IF_1}, \overline{IF_2}, \overline{IF_3}, where F_1, F_2, F_3 are such & such formats?"
Or are we allowed
   "\overline{IF}, \overline{IG}, \overline{IH}, where F, G, H are such & such formats?"
(Excuse the bastard LaTeX.)

However done, this will be clumsy.

Getting a notation that is self-consistent and pleases everyone is likely impossible. Ulrich thinks of \overline as denoting a completion in the lattice sense for ordered sets. Nate seeks a completion that converts a cancellative monoid to a group. I seek concise denotations for what we'll need to express in the Level 2 text.

I made my points in detail in an email to P1788 of 7 May 2012, at 21:52, so I won't repeat them here, but I append two off-list emails between me and Ulrich.

John Pryce

On 14 May 2012, at 09:53, Ulrich Kulisch wrote:
John,

I agree that we are very close. But I have a problem with your bar upon the I. It seems to me not being consistent with conventional use of the bar.

R and IR are both conditionally completely ordered sets (every subset has an infimum and a supremum). Such sets can be completed by joining a least and a greatest element which leads to a complete lattice. The completion is indicated by overlining the notation for the set. So we get \overline{R} and \overline{IR}. So putting a bar upon the symbol of a set means adding some elements to the set.

Let now F denote the set of floating-point numbers and \overline{F} := F U {-oo, +oo}.  Then the set I\overline{F} contains the elements
(1)      [-oo, -oo],  [-oo, a], [a, +oo], [-oo, +oo], with a \in F
the bounds always included in the set.
If putting a bar upon the I just means adding the empty set, then \overline{I}\overlineF} still cantains the elements (1) which are not in \overline{IF} in my notation.
If you require that \overline{I}\overlineF} should be the same as \overline{IF} then putting a bar upon the I means taking the lements (1) out of I\overline{F} which is a totally unusual behavior of the overlining.

Let me make another remark: I would prefer calling the elements of the set \overline{IR} "closed and connected sets of real numbers" instead of "closed real intervals". In colloquial English a real interval is a closed and bounded set of real numbers, i.e., an element of IR.

Best wishes
Ulrich


Am 12.05.2012 11:00, schrieb John Pryce:
Ulrich

On 11 May 2012, at 18:04, Ulrich Kulisch wrote:
...a preamble that states about the following:

A real interval (or interval for short) is defined as a closed and connected set of real numbers (a set of real numbers is called closed, if its complement is open). A real interval can be bounded or unbounded. If it is unbounded the bounds -oo and +oo are not elements of the interval.
Indeed that is what is meant. It is said clearly in the standard text. And also in my email
\overline{IR}   the set of closed real intervals, including unbounded intervals and the empty set.
The term "real interval" means a subset of the reals, not of the extended reals.

So I think we agree. If so, do you think my notation idea is OK?

John


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