I would ascribe metaphysicality to the current name, and comprehensibility to a more accurate name. In this case, “shuffling” is just an example of what can be done. Abstraction is all very nice, until any applied meaning is completely lost in mumbo-jumbo.
Neil Higgins (iPhone) higgins-dem...@bigpond.com > On 16 Oct 2018, at 10:20 am, Dan Kortschak <dan.kortsc...@adelaide.edu.au> > wrote: > > But this is not really what it does. You can see from the output of > this code https://play.golang.org/p/88Llo7zHTeK > > ``` > package main > > import ( > "fmt" > "math/rand" > ) > > func main() { > rand.Shuffle(10, func(i, j int) { > fmt.Println(i, j) > }) > } > ``` > > That `i` is not sampled from a random distribution, but in fact counts > down from the last index. > > This is an implementation of the Fisher-Yates shuffle https://golang.or > g/src/math/rand/rand.go?s=7456:7506#L225 > > The reason that rand.Shuffle is called Shuffle is that that is it's > intention. Just as sort.Sort has the intention of sorting things, but > needn't necessarily (https://play.golang.org/p/VdMuiFfcp6w). > > If we want to get metaphysical, nothing that we get the machine todo > intrinsically means anything beyond what meaning we ascribe to it > (under some transformation or set of bases). This is why we name things > and why those names matter. > >> On Tue, 2018-10-16 at 08:49 +1000, Neil Higgins wrote: >> So as well as getting rid of the euphemistic name, the documentation >> should simply say that it delivers n pairs of random numbers in the >> relevant range to a user-defined function. >> >> Neil Higgins (iPhone) >> higgins-dem...@bigpond.com >> >>> >>> On 16 Oct 2018, at 8:31 am, Neil Higgins <1955ne...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>> Well, ok. But I would call “Shuffle” a misleading misnomer, because >>> until the user defines a shuffler function (which perversely might >>> not, or might fail to, shuffle anything), it does not shuffle >>> anything. >>> >>> Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Neil -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
