My Mutt crashed in the middle while I was trying to send this, so I don't know if it went through ... so here it is again, just to be sure: On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 06:59:53PM +0100, René Clerc wrote: > * David Yitzchak Cohen <lists+mutt_users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [05-11-2003 00:36]: > > > Just for fun, I decided to run your search on Google. Here are some of > > the more interesting results: > > > > wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?learning+curve > > There, it's noted that Psychology didn't invent the term, but rather stole > > it from aironautical engineering, and then turned its meaning upside down. > > Psychology didn't turn the meaning upside down; the aeronatical > "learning curve" was given (if they were indeed first) different > quantities by the psychologists. Therefore, both learning curves are > not comparable. ...and: > Well, original or not, the "psychological" version (progress vs. time > or attepts) is what Allister referred to. And my point merely was > that he misused it. Nothing more. Well, if the psychologists can give different quantities to their curve to suit their purposes, I see no reason why we normal people can't give different quantities as well in order to suit our own purposes. What I'm getting at here is that even though my opinion is currently that the Psychological definition is probably the better one to use, the position that most people unknowingly take is far from indefensible, especially considering this Breaking News (TM) noting that the Psychological definition itself is psycho. > > http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/69/65.htm > > Here, we have another one claiming Psychology to be the original > > definition. It should come as no surprise, then, that the author goes > > on to bash computer people for misusing it. > > That's bashing? Ha. Then in your opinion, I must have been bashing > Allister.. Right. There are different degrees of bashing, you know. I certainly wouldn't say you were ramming a 10-ton dumptruck into him ;-) > > http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb98/feder.html > > Well, now there's an interesting phenomenum: how about the APA itself > > misusing the term it stole from the airplane engineers? > > > > http://www.uwic.ac.uk/ltsu/documents/5th%20July%20Conference%20Handouts%20Dominic%20Upton.doc > > Well, here we have another example of people well-versed in developmental > > psychology abusing what they claim to be their own term. > > It may be stupid for people working in the field the term came from to > misuse it, but that's no reason to haul down the definition. The > whole point of a definition is that it's given / true. I'm not arguing that this in any way weakens the term's definition (just like the fact that most computer scientists don't even know that they're misusing the term "web site" almost every day doesn't in any way take away the W3C's authority to name the stuff it's responsible for). However, it does show that "learning curve" in the Psychology definition is no more correct than "web site" in the W3C definition. We must pick our battles, and I'd rather fight battles that matter to me (computer-related battles) instead of battles from a field I couldn't care less about (is that the correct usage? I certainly made a correct statement, whether or not it's the "official" way of saying it) ... and I don't see any aviation engineers running around here complaining, either ;-) Now, I don't want to get in the way of any battles that psychologist dudes may be fighting, so I'd rather just steer clear of terms like "learning curve." However, I see no point in using the "correct" definition unless I'm willing to enter the battle. I'm not. Convincing people to listen to the W3C is hard enough for my taste. > > That's three interesting results on the first page alone (10 total > > results). If you're going to call the common use wrong, we might as well > > call the Psychology use wrong, as well; as it's measuring the inverse of > > what it should be. > > What _you_ think it should be. Be my guest, invent a Davean learning > curve with different quantities, but don't say that a defintion of a > term is wrong because (most) people misuse it. If I "invented" it, I'd be simply reinventing the "common" learning curve with exactly the same quantities that the "common" learning curve already has. In this regard, the term "learning curve" is in a significantly weaker position than the term "web site," for instance. We don't yet have another field stealing the term for its own use, and God-willing never will; we only have the common people misusing the term. Quite frankly, I'm a tad disappointed that people in the computer field are more interested in fighting others' battles than their own, even when their own are more "right." > > My take on the whole subject is that one shouldn't complain that others > > Correcting someone with a hint != complaining. I *could* complain > about it, however.. There are different degrees of complaining, as well ;-) > > are using something in a wrong way unless he's willing to do enough > > research to get to the bottom of the whole thing. > > I try to stick to facts and defnition as much as possible. Your > examples of people misusing the term don't frighten me: in Holland, > saying "Alice is better as Bob" when meaning "Alice is better than > Bob" is common practice. That's common in at least two other languages. It's wrong in both British English and American English, though. > We're at the point of making it an official > rule. Official rules of English in Holland don't frighten me. I don't have to start worrying until our good friends at Webster decide to put it in their dictionary ... and when they do, I can point to the Oxford dictionary, which is a lot better at keeping crap out of our language. (Webster specifically states that their dictionary follows common use, and that the reverse is not intended to be the case.) > But for me, that's no reason to accept it (of course, until it > becomes official). I don't care much for democratically-decided stuff. Democracy only works when all voters are well-educated in the issues at hand. Since nobody's educated in everything and most people hate to opt-out of a vote (especially with these slogans calling refusal to vote "unpatriotic"), Democracy doesn't work. The net result is that democratically-decided stuff sucks. People should follow the dictionary, and the reverse should never happen, IMHO. Of course, as long as we have idiots like Webster and Co. making our dictionaries, the best dictionaries in the land have to be imported from England. Crazy world. . . > Fact that the majority doesn't "behave" like they > ought to (according to the definition one should use "than" with a > comparative) doesn't mean the definition is wrong. I couldn't agree more :-) > > Simply pointing to an earlier use which differs from the common one > > is not enough, as we now clearly see. > > Pointing to many incorrect uses (abuses), followed by stating that the > term is incorrect is worse. worse than what? Anyway, pointing to many abuses from within the community pushing the "correct" definition is not bad in any way, for the purposes I was using it for. We're not within that community, so there's no reason for us to fight the battles that they themselves are not organized enough to fight. I'd much rather take an example from them and work harder at fighting our own battles - the ones we have a stake in; the ones we have an obligation to fight, IMHO. While it'd be wrong for us to knowingly abuse somebody else's term (essentially fighting against those who are more likely to be right since it's their own field), it's certainly wrong for us to knowingly abuse our own terms. Just like they're the last line of defense for the "correct" definitions of their terms, we're the last line of defense for the "correct" use of our own terms; if we don't want the same thing to happen to our own terms, we need to make sure our last line of defense isn't busy fighting others' battles. I guess the best conclusion here is: don't use the term "learning curve." If you hear somebody else using it, pretend you didn't hear the words "learning curve" being used. If the guy tries to force you into a corner, pretend you didn't know that _that's_ what "learning curve" meant. If he tries to explain what it means, _then_ you can "let him have it!" This way, you're not actively fighting somebody else's war unless you're sucked into a battle - in that case, you're fighting that battle and nothing else. If you want to fight a battle just for the hell of it, though, please do the computer world a favor and pick one in the computer field, so you at least do us some good in the process. Thanks, - Dave -- Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor? It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right? Please visit this link: http://rotter.net/israel
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