Re: RDDL-via-GRDDL and OWL/RDFS for GRDDL Vocabulary (defn Algorithm)

On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 10:55 -0400, Chimezie Ogbuji wrote:
[...]
> > The term I used was Algorithm. And I didn't identify the algorithm with
> > a document that specifies it.
> >
> >    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm>     ns0_:primaryTopic
> > data:Algorithm .
> >
> >
> > I suppose that's a normative dependency on wikipedia. Hmm.
> 
> I would think that the GRDDL ontology would need to be more authorative on 
> the definition of a 'transformation algorithm' (in the context of GRDDL) 
> than what Wikipedia provides, and am inclined to do w/out this dependency.

I can't imagine how this WG would achieve more authority on the topic
of what an algorithm is than Wikipedia.

The GRDDL namespace document doesn't (currently) introduce any novelty
with the term data:Algorithm. It's using the ordinary
dictionary/encyclopedia definition of the term. Would you prefer
to directly cite some seminal paper by Turing?

Or perhaps we should just copy the definition out of Wikipedia?

How about this?

[[
an algorithm is a procedure (a finite set of well-defined instructions)
for accomplishing some task which, given an initial state, will
terminate in a defined end-state"

 The concept was formalized in 1936 through Alan Turing's Turing
machines and Alonzo Church's lambda calculus.

Most algorithms can be directly implemented by computer programs; any
other algorithms can at least in theory be simulated by computer
programs. In many programming languages, algorithms are implemented as
functions or procedures.

Church, Alonzo (1936). "An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number
Theory". The American Journal Of Mathematics 58: 345—363. Reprinted in
The Undecidable, p. 89ff. The first expression of "Church's Thesis". See
in particular page 100 (The Undecidable) where he defines the notion of
"effective calculability" in terms of "an algorithm", and he uses the
word "terminates", etc.
]]

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Tuesday, 5 September 2006 16:05:19 UTC