From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jude DaShiell Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: why are there [v e c t o r s] in Lisp? Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:58:56 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: References: <87oafzpqfj.fsf@debian.uxu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1445068781 24292 80.91.229.3 (17 Oct 2015 07:59:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 07:59:41 +0000 (UTC) To: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Aur=E9lien_Aptel?= , "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org" Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Oct 17 09:59:31 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnMOn-00066q-71 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 09:59:29 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57442 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnMOm-00052S-BQ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:59:28 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41583) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnMOK-0004eC-Rm for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:59:01 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnMOH-0001Qz-LB for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:59:00 -0400 Original-Received: from mailbackend.panix.com ([166.84.1.89]:55462) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnMOH-0001Qv-HR for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:58:57 -0400 Original-Received: from panix1.panix.com (panix1.panix.com [166.84.1.1]) by mailbackend.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D11816966; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:58:56 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: by panix1.panix.com (Postfix, from userid 20712) id E68D114B9A; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:58:56 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by panix1.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E3CA014B98; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:58:56 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Alpine 2.11 (NEB 23 2013-08-11) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux (Android) X-Received-From: 166.84.1.89 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:107701 Archived-At: vectors are how elisp got used to write functions that do statistics I think. The vmean() function being one example and vmedian() being another. Unfortunately org-mode hasn't got a vmode() function to go along with those two which is why I use datamash to calculate my helath statistics. On Sat, 17 Oct 2015, Aur?lien Aptel wrote: > Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 21:11:23 > From: Aur?lien Aptel > To: "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org" > Subject: Re: why are there [v e c t o r s] in Lisp? > > I'm just nitpicking, but: > > On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 3:12 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote: >> direction and magnitude (in particular, it doesn't >> have a position). But whatever the math, isn't that (a > > The direction and the position you're talking about are geometry > concepts. Linear algebra is just a tool that can be used to model many > things e.g. in mechanics to represent forces, in euclidian geometry to > represent positions *or* directions, you can even used them to model > text documents [1] etc. In pure linear algebra, "direction" and > "position" are not defined for vectors. You could argue that elisp is > using vectors to model a specific concept (constant time random access > objects) and as such deserves its own notation, different from the > list. > > See? It's all a matter of perspective. > > 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_space_model > > --