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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 07:07am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16556 of 16562)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Many of the kinds of things that go wrong in computer programs also go wrong in people's minds, in social organizations - and social organizations in interactions - for logical reasons. ( Of course, there are crucial differences, too - people are more than machines. )

Here's one of my favorite passages, quoted "in fun" - at the beginning of Donald E. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming

" Here is your book, the one your thousands of letters have asked us to publish. It has taken us years to do, checking and rechecking countless recipes to bring you only the best, only the interesting, only the perfect. Now, we can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that every single one of them, if you follow the directions to the letter, will work for you exactly as well as it did for us, even if you have never cooked before. . . . McCall's Cookbook (1963).

( If ever there was a set of work in seven volumes that require a reader with prior experience, Knuth's classic is it. )

Knuth's third volume, and an imposing one, is devoted to sorting and searching .

Some search keys and search procedures are millions or billions of times faster than others - and some work when others can't possibly.

Here's a basic search key for teaching. Find out what, in a field, is most frequently involved with function - not by inspection or by guessing - but by careful classification and counting - like the work done to determine word frequencies summarized here http://www.mrshowalter.net/FrequencyOfVeryCommonWords.htm

The very common things are important to teach - and if these very common things are well learned - learning everything else is easier - and function is better in all sorts of ways.

Some organizing facts are much better than others.

f = ma

is an example, and there are many more. Lchic and I are working to find some basic search keys - of wide application - and have succeeded in finding some, useful for some common purposes.

Here is one of my favorites: http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html

If Edison had been taught that - he could have done a lot better. If people learn that now - a lot more of them can come closer to the effectiveness Edison showed.

cantabb - 07:37am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16557 of 16562)

Another series of Off-topic, disjointed ramblings.

rshow55 - 06:28am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16550 of 16556)

Here's a fact. If you will, a "search key" - a way of organizing material. I don't believe that it existed, in such a clear form, until I worked it out - with lchic's help. ......

rshow55 - 06:31am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16551 of 16556)

Curriculum decisions, and many other decisions all through society, would improve radically now if the importance of frequency of use were understood. ........Eisenhower wouldn't have phrased the problem that way - but he would have been very glad to see the point stated. I think it is an enormously important point.

lchic - 06:40am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16552 of 16556)

Economics of Terror note increase in frequency

lchic - 06:56am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16553 of 16556)

Word Frequency - lists - analysers ..........

lchic - 07:00am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16554 of 16556)

Showalter you were saying in this & next post......

rshow55 - 07:07am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16556 of 16556)

Many of the kinds of things that go wrong in computer programs also go wrong in people's minds, .....If Edison had been taught that - he could have done a lot better. If people learn that now - a lot more of them can come closer to the effectiveness Edison showed.

This will continue till Nov 14.

cantabb - 07:50am Nov 5, 2003 EST (# 16558 of 16562)

From one of lchic's links about 'word frequency' lists, above:

The frequency data is based on the British National Corpus. The BNC project was carried out and is managed by an industrial/academic consortium lead by Oxford University Press

Frequency of another 'word' !

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