Very valuable insight, and good point about lists ...

2008-09-11T01:31:00.000-07:00

Very valuable insight, and good point about lists vs. bags. I think every time I've technically needed a bag, I've just used a list instead, since they're built in to most languages.

I've noticed this awkwardness box but. Here's what...

2008-09-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

I've noticed this awkwardness box but. Here's what I do know from practice:
Disappointingly
``ordered set'' - Object constraint Language (sub-language to UML) They define bags, lists, and sets too; they must've drawn the grid too.

``sorted set'' - java.util.SortedSet
(ConcurrentSkipListSet and TreeSet are implementors) The latter comes in very handy at times.

Ordering is usually more abstract in mathematics. You apply an ordering to a set. The ordering as it pertains to a list is usually related to algorithm insertion order (e.g. appending, pre-pending, inserting).

Then denumerability is sort of a related as it maps sets to the natural ordering of positive integers.

Moreover, I think it is fairly rare to see a bag (rarer than an ordered set). If one had to elide one of the three elements in that table, it'd be the one to go and we'd be left with our linearly independent ideas (uniqueness and order (sortedness?)).

Have you ever seen anyone use a bag in practice (multiset?), I think everyone just uses a list (ignoring the ordering) since it is as much work to guarantee nothing about something as just trivially ignore features of another.

The mathematicians would probably call it a unilis...

2008-09-05T03:43:00.000-07:00

The mathematicians would probably call it a unilist. I think we can do better.

Comments on Your Mom's Favorite Blog: Missing Data Structure

Very valuable insight, and good point about lists ...

I've noticed this awkwardness box but. Here's what...

The mathematicians would probably call it a unilis...