On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 20:08, Gregg C Levine wrote: > Hello from Gregg C Levine > Okay, I'll bite, what does that phrase mean? "catastrophe curve", I > confess it's a rather new one to me. > > But it does make you wonder, just how long SCO will keep hanging > around to annoy us.
There is a branch of mathematics dealing with catastrophic events, and
the "catastrophe curve" is one of it's concepts which has been vastly
simplifed (to the point of unrecognizability) in popular usage
(including mine above).
As I remember -- from a brief article a long time back, so do
you're own research before treating this as gospel -- technically a
catastrophe curve in n dimensions is an n-2 (ok it could be any number
less than n-1) dimensional contiguous space which while all vectors over
the operant function remain within its bounds the subsequent vectors
remain within those bounds but with a vector beyond that curve the
subseqent vectors will fall "catastropically" beyond that curve.
In a 3 space think of a mesa. While you're on the top and not near the
edge you're fine but the once you go near the edge, you're in danger,
and even if the edge is not a sheer cliff you could find yourself in a
situation where it's impossible to get back up. Here the catastrophe
curve would be the circumference of the mesa.
But in profanely poor common use, as I used, it we think of the
"catastrophe curve" as just a cross section of the mesa with time as an
implicit third dimension. As long as you stay on the top and away from
the edge, fine even if you're headed toward the edge you could still put
on the brakes. But once past the knee, you are
off doing the Wiley Coyote drop... Again in bad misusage: the knee is
actually a single point cross section of the "real" catastrophe curve
and we're (I'm) misusing the phrase. The other common usage is
actually closer to it's correct meaning: "skating the edge of the
catastrophe curve" - meaning in the example above walking perilously
close to the cliff edges of the mesa.
-- TWZ
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