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Re:Problems with Hash Tables by donw on Friday January 08, 2010 @04:30PM (#1040478)
As a mathematician, I find evidence-based arguments very convincing... where do you think that QED comes from, the planet of magic unicorns?

Purely mathematical proofs are nothing but supplying a pile of evidence, in the form of theorems and facts that both the proof-reader and proof-writer agree on, to support the argument that the proof is attempting to make.

What you have done in your article is this:

"X implies Y, QED."

And when people pointed this out, you balked, rather than writing a follow up that looked like this:

"X may imply Y under many circumstances. Take X. A, B, C, and Q are very common implementations of X, and all of them do Y, based on the following analysis..."

Re:Problems with Hash Tables by RiderOfGiraffes on Friday January 08, 2010 @04:41PM (#1040503)
My article?

But leaving that aside, I simply don't understand your points at all. In what way is a mathematical proof "a pile of evidence"? Consider, as a simple, single example the Banach-Tarski theorem. To help me understand you, perhaps you could explain how the proof of that is "a pile of evidence."

As I said elsewhere, I'm baffled by the responses here, so I'm not going to reply any more until, and if, I understand the points of view being expressed.

EDIT: speeling cerrocted