RE: [HighResolutionTime] Spec consistently uses "monotonically increasing" when it means "monotonically nondecreasing"

Sorry, I mean monotonically non-decreasing such that for all x and y such that x ˜ y one has f(x) ˜ f(y). This would mean the difference between two chronologically recorded time values returned from now() can only be positive or zero.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jatinder Mann [mailto:jmann@microsoft.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:27 AM
To: Boris Zbarsky; public-web-perf@w3.org
Subject: RE: [HighResolutionTime] Spec consistently uses "monotonically increasing" when it means "monotonically nondecreasing"

>> The spec should use "nondecreasing" if that's what it means. If it 
>> really means "increasing", then I'd like to understand how this can 
>> possibly be implemented.
>
> Though one more note.  The definition of "monotonically increasing"
> is not actually standardized across the world in mathematics.  In some 
> cases it means |x <= y implies f(x) <= f(y)| (with "strictly increasing"
> used to mean |x < y implies f(x) < f(y)|, and in some cases it means
> |x < y implies f(x) < f(y)|, with "nondecreasing" meaning the other thing.
>
> It might be best to just spell out in the spec which behavior it actually means....
>
> -Boris

I believe changing the spec text to say monotonically nondecreasing and defining that term to mean |x < y implies f(x) < f(y)| within the spec will better align with my intentions of not allowing the difference between two chronologically recorded time values returned from the now() method to be negative. I'll update the spec.

Thanks,
Jatinder

Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 18:14:37 UTC