At 18:14 -0800 3/14/10, Jon Lang wrote: >There are discrete things that are not ordered (such as gaussian >integers), and there are ordered things that are not discrete (such as >real numbers or strings).
The word discrete as in "atoms are the discrete view of matter" may turn out to be confusing to a class of calculus trained folks. Anything that can be made into a list is discrete. The other option is a function in the sense of the calculus that truly has an infinite number of values. Computers don't deal with that kind of thing except, perhaps, in the likes of Mathematica and Maple where ROOTOF( ) is used to represent something that cannot be calculated right now. I really don't think perl should be getting into that. But there is a discrete Fourier transform that is never exactly the same as a Fourier transform done with the techniques of integral calculus. Perl6 surely will be performing the discrete kind but will the arguments and answers need to be discrete variables? They will surely be lists of, often complex, numbers. Perhaps the term atomic could be discreetly considered in place of discrete. -- --> A fair tax is one that you pay but I don't <--
