Posted by John Nichols on December 01, 2005 at 15:19:45 from 165.91.198.54 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Paradox posted by Jock on December 01, 2005 at 11:53:46:
Jock:
I hate bl**dy symbolic logic. I used to spend days of unimaginable terror trying to learn that stuff and am a miserable failure at it. I have trouble remembering what or means.
I was in no way trying to replicate the problem, although given several hours and a LISP compiler I could write code to achieve the objective. I was merely showing the basics and as far as I am concerned the end of my verbal knowledge.
Certainly for the lads and lassies on this site I am not going to demonstrate my lousy grasp of this subject, nor yesterday did I have time to try. We have a proposal due out today and I had to work on that project.
I am pleased you solved it very nicely.
For the others, if I had to sort 100,000 things into order, and I have done this a lot, then I need a test function. Boolean logic, named after the British mathematician Boole, gives us this method.
I will give you an example that directly affects producers like Mr Dixon. If you go to an auction, then the highest bidder wins, a simple theory. However on an electronic reverse auction the bids are the lowest to sell an item. Everyone hears the bids and can make a lower one. The bidding closes after 30 minutes of no further bids.
The buyers argument is that a auction and a reverse auction are identical concepts. The trick I am trying to sort out and we have just started the search is to prove they are not. I have been toying with symbolic logic for this problem.
If Dixon sells his sheep in a Reverse Auction he can be taken to the cleaners, which grates on my sense of natural justice. You should be paid a fair return for your work and not tricked in a gambling game.
JMN