studiot

Which is exactly the point I was trying to make in another thread. Thank you for phrasing it better than I did.

What do you mean by "the ensemble of all such vector spaces" please?

Hello Huestan and welcome to SF. You say you were educated in Canada, but going for UK citizenship. This is important because the career trajectory for Engineers in the UK , and the USA is quite different. In Europe it is different again. I am not quite sure how the Canadian system works, but I believe it has characteristics of both the UK and the american systems. In the UK the institutions that control the engineering profession are not part of the State. They are private organised by the professions themselves, and success in state examinations does not guarantee professional progression, as it does in Europe. In the USA there is the State test of Professional Competence, which is above academic or professional institutions. The UK system is to aim for what is known as Chartered Engineer status (or Incorporated Enginner as the next step down). This staus is above any academic or state qualification. So your first goal should be to look at each system and decide which path you want to follow. Of course it is possible to convert from one to the other if you move and work elsewhere.

First I would like to thank both wtf and Xerxes for the large amount of hard work and thoughtful interesting material they have put into this. Perhaps unfortunately this has introduced the issue of 'what is a set?', which was not the subject of this thread, interesting though it may be. Indeed I would support the contention that that issue deserves a thread of its own. I think it was Xerxes, though I cannot locate it at the moment, that offered a link to Professor Weiss's lecture notes and thoughts on the subject of what constitutes a set. These notes use Richard’s paradox to exemplify what is not a set, in his definition. In my original post I did not specify any particular definition or restriction on what might constitute a set. Indeed the fact that we have so many words for an assembly of objects suggests that there are many (some subtle) shades of meaning. So we use Aggregate, agglomerate, collection, class, group, assembly, category and many others. Now during my working life I was an applied mathematician, which means I was interested primarily in obtaining answers by fair means or foul. I have more time now to lift the covers and look underneath and this is what I was attempting in starting this thread. To an applied mathematician, restrictions of set definition based on Zermelo does not cut it. Rather it introduces severe difficulties, for example the set of all men or all men in Denmark or whatever as heavily used in actuarial mathematics. In fact an effect I have noted is for restrictions to be stated at the beginning of something, a course, a book, a development of theory etc and then to be forgotten later when attempts to apply that theory outside the domain of definition are made. Zermolo’s theory is like this and placed somewhere in the middle of the pecking order of set generality. In particular it was developed for and strictly is restricted to sets with numbers as elements. This does not prevent it being useful sometimes elsewhere. I cannot put this idea of generalisation v restriction more clearly than Professor Phillips. This is extracted from his Analysis, Cambridge University Press. So to the original post. Although zero elements imply total properties = elements times available properties = 0 I am still not sure about this as I said in post#8.

Because of the language difficulty I suspect tomjin means something different from us for many of the terms he is throwing about. Since this thread is about constants everyone should agree first what that means. Then I suggest that the words isotropy and homegeny are examined because I think tom is mixing these concepts.

Why only feedback, Mike? Why not feedforward? https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=feed+forward+error+back+propagation

Whyever not? Frequency (actually phase) pulling into sync of linked oscillators is a well observed and documented phenomenon. The flashing of fireflies is one classic example. https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=frequency+pulling+of+linked+oscillators&gbv=2&oq=frequency+pulling+of+linked+oscillators&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3...1875.13860.0.14391.41.17.1.23.5.0.219.2032.1j14j1.16.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..22.19.1827.6S54l699au8

As a bystander this seems to me to be developing into classic trolling. DFTT.

Actually you need time to pass for other processes than movement or motion, for example spontaneous radioactive decay. You could still measure time passage (or lack of it) by these means.

+1 for research and detail, arc. Just to add something about Martin Gardner. He was responsible for the book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (now in the Dover catalogue) "Examines various cults, quack systems, frauds, delusions which at various times have masqueraded as Science. Accounts of hollow earth fanaticslike Symmes; Velikovsky and the wandering planets; Bellamay and the theory of multiple moons from the list of topics are relevent here.

This whole junket is clearly a plug for Nigel Molesworth books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth At least they offered a semblence of humour.

Thank you those who have added new information since I last looked. Imatfaal the French connection goes back further than you think (certainly further than the film). In Europe, including England and Scotland, The village and town (called ton, burgh etc) were constructs of the Feudal System,as I'm sure you know. A bonded man who escaped a village and made it to a town became free for instance The village acknowledged one ruling Lord, a town had a committee or council of some sort. The city is even older as in the ancient greek City-States, which recognised no overseeing authority. The word city fell into disuse in Roman times as everywhere, owed allegiance to Rome but was maintained in the word citadel, around which many later cities were developed.

Welcome to the side of the angels, arc. +1

You should study Bayesian statistics applied to decision making. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bayesian+statistics+for+decision+making&hl=en-GB&biw=&bih=&gbv=2&oq=bayesian+statistics+for+decision+making&gs_l=heirloom-serp.3...13687.17109.0.17375.20.5.0.15.15.0.125.546.2j3.5.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-serp..14.6.561.kQ5vBwA-nI8 Also the use of Limit State Theory in Engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_state_design

A very high percentage of people have one or more major changes of career during their professional study and subsequent working lives. This trend is for this percentage to continue rising. Note the first change can occur either at college or immediately after. I know two sisters who both completely changed tack after graduating college. One did foreign languages and then returned for a further degree to qualify as a speech therapist, I forget what the second originally studied, but she went back and qualified as a podiatrist and now has her own thriving business in podiatry. As a matter of interest you only mention your father. I don't wish to pry into your family circumstances, but does your mother not also have an opinion on this. Whatever, physiotherapy is a highly respectable occupation that can take you far.

Thanks for the information so far. Are there no religous connections?

Can anyone tell me the difference to an American between a City, a Town and a Village please|?

Yes it just goes to show that my original hunch was correct. There are some spiders lurking in the dark corners of set theory. Oh and BTW, which set theory? There are several versions of modern set theory. Neither wtf or you have shown that it is necessary condition of membership for us to know or be able to know if an element is a set member or the properties of said member. Surely an element would be a member, within the terms of reference, even if humans had never existed?

Weighs? What sort of kilogramme are you talking about?

Hello Xerxes, how do you define 'true'? I would also be interested in understanding what the relevence of this is to the thread please?

I don't think you did as I subsequently pointed out. Was my post not clear, I can elaborate if you like. I will concede that enumeration (as a counting process) is different but not necessary. Edit. I just noticed some stuff in your post#30 that was added since I last looked at it. It does not change my opinion; I will produce a properly reasoned response.

Antimatter was postulated in 1928, experimentally confirmed in 1933 and first human use made in 1951. http://timeline.web.cern.ch/timelines/Discovering-the-positron

Isn't is a good feeling when you puzzle something out for yourself and find you have puzzled it correctly? +1

Thank you , Fred, for responding to my question. I was really seeking specific examples in preference to generalities and would welcome any that you can offer.

Studiot wrote To which you replied Is this still Science Forums or has is been renamed to AliceinWonderlandForums? What could be simpler than saying whether you think this is a Physics question or a Mathematics question? We can proceed from there.