Re: Counting propositions

"x" <x-false_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<40d02f27_at_post.usenet.com>...
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> > > > > > > Ok. But why there is a need to know this number ?
> > > > > > > It is like saying "today I made 100 affirmations".
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Have you never wanted to know how many of something you had? Can
> you
> > > > > > not envisage a large business wanting to know, for example, how
> many
> > > > > > employees it has?
> > > > >
> > > > > Employees yes. Propositions no.
> > > >
> > > > Very droll ;-)
> > > >
> > > > But the fact is that from the N propositions we have that say "We have
> > > > an employee named xxx with salary yyy ...", we can deduce the useful
> > > > fact that we have N employees - simply by counting the propositions.
> > >
> > > What made you so sure.
> >
> > What makes you so unsure? Are you making some kind of philosophical
> > point that I'm not getting?
>
> Well, because you don't directly count employees, but you count propositions
> about employees instead, it is a legitimate question to ask if the result is
> accurate and why.
>
> Other reasons:
> - the database may contain propositions about past, current and future
> employees
> - the database may contain propositions about employees in different
> relations (or relvars)
> - it might be hard to distinguish propositions about employees from other
> propositons in the database

Well, you ceertainly have to know what the propositions mean before you can get a meaningful answer by counting them. If the propositions include past and future employees then you should ensure that you only count the propositions about current employees by adding the appropriate WHERE clause.

It shouldn't be at all hard to distinguish propositions about employess from other propositions in the database, because a relation/table must only hold propositions of one type. Received on Thu Jun 17 2004 - 11:06:32 CEST