February 13, 2018 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Continuing with Menabrea - 16
The Note F of Ada Lovelace, I think, is
self explanatory and I need not elaborate on them.
Some difficulties that do arise in
understanding what the authors are trying to say is more due to the fashion of
writing of those times; they tended to keep the sentences very long, often
joined and interlinked with commas and semi colons, which in today’s writing
would easily be broken into shorter simpler sentences.
I hope you take extra care in reading the
notes of Ada Lovelace for it is in these Notes lies what many consider to the
first computer program, in her case an algorithm that is designed to be carried
out by a machine.
Now we shall go back to the treatise of
Menabrea.
“Resuming what we have explained concerning
the Analytical Engine, we may conclude that it is based on two principles:
The first consisting in the fact that every
arithmetical calculation ultimately depends on four principal operations – addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division; the second, in the possibility of
reducing every analytical calculation to that of the coefficients for the
several terms of a series.
If this last principle be true, all the
operations of analysis come within the domain of the engine.
To take another point of view: the use of
the cards offers a generality equal to that of algebraic formulae, since such a
formula simply indicates the nature and order of the operations requisite for
arriving at a certain definite result, and similarly the cards merely command
the engine to perform these same operations; but in order that the mechanisms
may be able to act to any purpose, the numerical data of the problem must in
every particular case be introduced.
Thus the same series of cards will serve
for all questions whose sameness of nature is such as to require nothing
altered excepting the numerical data.
In this light the cards are merely a translation
of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another form of analytical
notation.
Since the engine has a mode of acting
peculiar to itself, it will in every particular case be necessary to arrange
the series of calculations conformably to the means which the machine
possesses; for such or such a process which might be very easy for a calculator
may be long and complicated for the engine, and vice versa.
Considered under the most general point of
view, the essential object of the machine being to calculate, according to the
laws dictated to it, the values of numerical coefficients which it is then to
distribute appropriately on the columns which represent the variables, it
follows that the interpretation of formulae and of results is beyond its
province, unless indeed this very interpretation be itself susceptible of
expression by means of the symbols which the machine deploys.
Thus, although it is not itself the being
that reflects, it may yet the considered as the being which executes the concepts
of intelligence.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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