Re:Category Theory, Syntactically (2016)
by stillkicking on Saturday April 29, 2017 @10:48PM
(#14229940)
No it's terrible, and the fact that you don't notice is exactly the problem. See also: monads. If you understand the basic process of what's going on (preparing food) and what it's meant to do (produce a delicious treat), formalizing your understanding in this way feels like concise and clear insight. If you don't yet know anything, it will be meaningless word salad where each 'answer' produces a multitude more questions.
Note e.g. that I never once cited an actual cake, I merely provided an example of a category of cakes. This too is a problem with mathematics, so in love with their abstractions, they no longer notice the lack of the concrete.
Re:Category Theory, Syntactically (2016)
by justifier on Thursday April 27, 2017 @06:56PM
(#14215531)
You may enjoy: http://www.cookingforengineers.com
No, seriously. Just look what this example does - it recursively provides a short description for each of the important concepts in the process of baking cakes. After reading this, I now feel I have a decent map of the topic - both what the things / processes involve and what they don't involve. I've also been introduced to domain terminology that will help me understand other sources.
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As for original question, why definitions - I believe it's good to have precise definitions next to casual explanations of the same things, just so that the reader can quickly connect the casually discussed aspect with the precise definition, and answer some of their own questions (which authors can't predict) through thinking.