This post is about what's yet puzzling me about the results of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the recent results by @npcompl33t You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the results by @quimqu and his Skribe You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., not to forget the always interesting remarks by @Stolfi and his bookshelf example.
I'm sorry to use analogies to exemplify my point, and I'm aware I may have a naive approach to the subject. But, it'd took me months to get a reasonable mathematical grab on the topics involved, and I would forget 99% of it in one week, so please excuse me
I start from "Stolfi's bookshelf". We find a number of books in a disordered state, and surely we can order them by one variable, say height. Does this ordering means anything? Very probably no, for instance it's expected the heights are a random variable around an average, so the ordering of the heights has no relationship with the books itself (to be charitable, it could have something to do with the process conditions in the printing mill, but let set this aside).
It might also be the books actually had an underlying order by height, for instance the editor gradually decreased the height to save money. But can we demonstrate it? Not at all, because the ordering we get is undistinguishable, in general, from the order got previously.
If we add more variables we may yet fall in the same trap if they are dependent on one another. For instance we may add weight, which is proportional to height (barring other size changes). When we order by height we discover the books are also ordered by weight, but this is trivial and we learned nothing. See below graphs.
(Sorry, dunno what I did and posted a reply instead of going on, the continuation follows below)
I'm sorry to use analogies to exemplify my point, and I'm aware I may have a naive approach to the subject. But, it'd took me months to get a reasonable mathematical grab on the topics involved, and I would forget 99% of it in one week, so please excuse me
I start from "Stolfi's bookshelf". We find a number of books in a disordered state, and surely we can order them by one variable, say height. Does this ordering means anything? Very probably no, for instance it's expected the heights are a random variable around an average, so the ordering of the heights has no relationship with the books itself (to be charitable, it could have something to do with the process conditions in the printing mill, but let set this aside).
It might also be the books actually had an underlying order by height, for instance the editor gradually decreased the height to save money. But can we demonstrate it? Not at all, because the ordering we get is undistinguishable, in general, from the order got previously.
If we add more variables we may yet fall in the same trap if they are dependent on one another. For instance we may add weight, which is proportional to height (barring other size changes). When we order by height we discover the books are also ordered by weight, but this is trivial and we learned nothing. See below graphs.
(Sorry, dunno what I did and posted a reply instead of going on, the continuation follows below)
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)
