Re: Ada noob here! Is Ada widely used?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Sat, 5 Jun 2010 20:41:47 +0000 (UTC), tmoran@acm.org wrote:

>>>    The word "model" is key.  It is meaningless to talk about whether
>>> something, software or hardware, *is* stochastic - but one can observe
>>> whether a stochastic *model* of the system is helpful or not.
>>
>> Hmm, I think a physicist would strongly disagree with that. AFAIK, there is
>> no working deterministic models of quantum processes.
>   A fair number of physicists have tried to find a hidden-variable
> deterministic version of quantum mechanics.  In the meantime, engineers
> quite successfully used the probabilistic model to build working devices.

Yes, the modern understanding is that things are inherently random.

>> 1. Confidence has nothing to do with probability. It is an absolutely
>> different model of uncertainly. That returns us to the square one.
>> Confidences and probabilities are incomparable.
>>
>> 2. Your confidence describes you, it does not the program. It fact, it is
>> like - I give my word, it works. Fine, but why anybody should trust my
>> word?
>    We fundamentally differ.  I use statistical decision theory, which
> takes costs of outcomes and *estimated probabilities* of outcomes, to make
> decisions.

Ah, I thought you meant "confidence factors", but it seems that you did
"confidence intervals"?

> All I have is my best estimates, ie, confidence levels.  I
> don't know the "absolute probability" of an event, and if you define that
> by frequency of occurrence, you really need to wait till the end of the
> universe to finally nail that down.

No problem, confidence interval is perfectly OK. The probability itself
tells nothing about next occurrence.

The problem is that to apply this theory to software you need maybe,
imaginary space of elementary outcomes (independent, complete etc). I don't
see any of that in the software. It is a fundamental issue. What is the
probability that the 100_000th decimal position of Pi is 5? 0.1? Rubbish,
it is not a random variable!

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de