Talk:Patent val: Difference between revisions

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::: Additionally, it probably isn't favorable to replace ''val'' by ''map''. Which word is more common in RTT? I suppose it's ''map''. So unless ''val'' is deprecated completely as a term, we should be using it more so as to make it familiar to people. This corresponds to the consequence that increasing its use rate means increasing the Shannon entropy of our RTT terms set. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 22:51, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

:::: Thanks for clarifying the meaning of edomapping. In the parlance I recommend, "map" is already the word for an individual line of a mapping. "Map" is my substitute for "val". So a "mapping" is a matrix like {{vector|{{map|12 19 28}} and a "map" is a covector like {{map|12 19 28}}. I don't think that's popular parlance but I think it works well and I would like to popularize it.

:::: I'm glad you find "nearest map" to be fine. Would you agree I should alter my proposal from "simple map" to "nearest map" and you would find it acceptable, then?

:::: I don't understand what you mean, however, by "['nearest map'] is already there". My guess was that you meant that it's already a common usage. But I don't find any hits for "nearest map" or "nearest val" anywhere on the wiki or the Discord server. Perhaps there's evidence elsewhere, such as on Facebook, but I'm not sure how to search it effectively. Or what did you mean exactly by that?

:::: I do not mean to replace every instance of "patent val" on the wiki, for the reason you describe: impracticality. I would wish that over time some may naturally be supplemented with a parenthetical or outright replaced, and I would likely contribute gradually to the effort myself, but even if I was willing to do that amount of effort, I don't think it's right to force the issue on the community like that. My goal is not simply to change how people read this stuff, but to help improve how they think about it. I totally respect your choice to keep your idiolect close to the majority (and also, that's a cool word, "idiolect"...)

:::: I note, however, that the "p" used in wart notation does not actually stand for "patent". Well, of course, it can be made to, but my point is that the man who designed wart notation, Graham Breed, did not intend it to stand for patent. In fact, he dislikes the term "patent" as well. He meant for the p in wart notation to stand for "prime", as he explained in this recent Facebook post: https://bit.ly/3ocLPKJ Anyway, I don't blame you for assuming that. I assumed it myself, until I heard it from him directly, and at first was quite taken aback!

:::: The val vs map issue is another topic, certainly. I assume you made a mistake in the above and meant to say you suppose that "val" is more popular? I would agree. And as an extremely rough measure I searched for the count of pages that contain "val" vs. the count that contain "map" and there's over 1000 with val while only around 300 with map, which doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, I would say that I expected it to be even more lopsided, and expect that a lot of those usages of "map" are as verbs, like A maps to B. I don't understand your point about Shannon entropy exactly, but it sounds interesting, so please clarify if you'd like. I think I get the gist of your point, though, that if val is more popular, and we don't have good reason to deprecate it, then we should rally around it as a community, rather than splinter off into clusters that advocate for one of several different terms, confusing the issue overall for everyone on average.

:::: I do have what I think is good reason to deprecate val in favor of map, though: "val" creates an unnecessary barrier to understanding for ''newcomers'' to RTT, who in the long run — assuming the community continues to grow, which I believe we all hope it should — will constitute the vast majority. Many newcomers to RTT are already familiar with established terms for the concepts RTT borrows from linear algebra. Even if "val" does have some connection to the mathematical concept of a "valuation", this is of no help in illuminating its music-theory meaning, which is simply that of being a mapping from a single generator to primes. The first sentence in the Xenharmonic Wiki article for "val" says, "a val is a linear map". And the first sentence of the Wikipedia article where "covector" redirects to is: "... a covector is a linear map from a vector space to its field of scalars". So that is why I prefer "map" to "val". --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 01:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

== proposal to rename "generalize patent val" to "uniform map" ==

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::: The cognitive process I mentioned above therefore leads to the reason why ''generalized patent val'' is friendly to our minds. Moreover, I like that the relationship between patent val and generalized patent val is demonstrated by the name in that one contains the other. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 22:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

:::: We disagree about how best to explain this concept. You've convinced me that there is some virtue to the existing way of explaining it that's in the article. So I retract my proposal to replace it. Perhaps you would allow that — if I made some revisions to my way as you've recommended — there would be room for including my way of explaining it too. Eventually. But again this not my main interest here, so I'll drop the issue for now.

:::: You've also convinced me to stop using the phrase "contradiction in terms" with respect to "non-integer EDOs". You're totally correct. Sorry for resisting, and thanks for explaining your take on that.

:::: I'd like to call your attention to a point that I made in the original post which is that an "integer uniform map" is exactly equivalent to a "simple map"/"patent val" for the given integer. This to me is how best to achieve one name containing the other, which I do agree with you is a desirable effect that should be preserved. As I described, my approach inverts their relationship, so that it is the "integer uniform map" which is a specific type of "uniform map", rather than the other way around, where a "generalized patent val" is a generalized type of "patent val". In fact, when Dave Keenan and I were developing these proposals, it turned into somewhat of a drag-out fight, where for days I refused to budge that "integer uniform map" should be the only replacement for "patent val", while he only accepted "simple map", but we eventually came to the agreement that both terms had merit in different contexts. They are just two different helpful ways of thinking about the same structure; in contexts pertaining to tuning accuracy, "simple map" works great, and in contexts pertaining to other uniform maps, "integer uniform map" works great. --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 01:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

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 ::: Additionally, it probably isn't favorable to replace ''val'' by ''map''. Which word is more common in RTT? I suppose it's ''map''. So unless ''val'' is deprecated completely as a term, we should be using it more so as to make it familiar to people. This corresponds to the consequence that increasing its use rate means increasing the Shannon entropy of our RTT terms set. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 22:51, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
+:::: Thanks for clarifying the meaning of edomapping. In the parlance I recommend, "map" is already the word for an individual line of a mapping. "Map" is my substitute for "val". So a "mapping" is a matrix like {{vector|{{map|12 19 28}} and a "map" is a covector like {{map|12 19 28}}. I don't think that's popular parlance but I think it works well and I would like to popularize it.
+:::: I'm glad you find "nearest map" to be fine. Would you agree I should alter my proposal from "simple map" to "nearest map" and you would find it acceptable, then?
+:::: I don't understand what you mean, however, by "['nearest map'] is already there". My guess was that you meant that it's already a common usage. But I don't find any hits for "nearest map" or "nearest val" anywhere on the wiki or the Discord server. Perhaps there's evidence elsewhere, such as on Facebook, but I'm not sure how to search it effectively. Or what did you mean exactly by that?
+:::: I do not mean to replace every instance of "patent val" on the wiki, for the reason you describe: impracticality. I would wish that over time some may naturally be supplemented with a parenthetical or outright replaced, and I would likely contribute gradually to the effort myself, but even if I was willing to do that amount of effort, I don't think it's right to force the issue on the community like that. My goal is not simply to change how people read this stuff, but to help improve how they think about it. I totally respect your choice to keep your idiolect close to the majority (and also, that's a cool word, "idiolect"...)
+:::: I note, however, that the "p" used in wart notation does not actually stand for "patent". Well, of course, it can be made to, but my point is that the man who designed wart notation, Graham Breed, did not intend it to stand for patent. In fact, he dislikes the term "patent" as well. He meant for the p in wart notation to stand for "prime", as he explained in this recent Facebook post: https://bit.ly/3ocLPKJ Anyway, I don't blame you for assuming that. I assumed it myself, until I heard it from him directly, and at first was quite taken aback!
+:::: The val vs map issue is another topic, certainly. I assume you made a mistake in the above and meant to say you suppose that "val" is more popular? I would agree. And as an extremely rough measure I searched for the count of pages that contain "val" vs. the count that contain "map" and there's over 1000 with val while only around 300 with map, which doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, I would say that I expected it to be even more lopsided, and expect that a lot of those usages of "map" are as verbs, like A maps to B. I don't understand your point about Shannon entropy exactly, but it sounds interesting, so please clarify if you'd like. I think I get the gist of your point, though, that if val is more popular, and we don't have good reason to deprecate it, then we should rally around it as a community, rather than splinter off into clusters that advocate for one of several different terms, confusing the issue overall for everyone on average.
+:::: I do have what I think is good reason to deprecate val in favor of map, though: "val" creates an unnecessary barrier to understanding for ''newcomers'' to RTT, who in the long run — assuming the community continues to grow, which I believe we all hope it should — will constitute the vast majority. Many newcomers to RTT are already familiar with established terms for the concepts RTT borrows from linear algebra. Even if "val" does have some connection to the mathematical concept of a "valuation", this is of no help in illuminating its music-theory meaning, which is simply that of being a mapping from a single generator to primes. The first sentence in the Xenharmonic Wiki article for "val" says, "a val is a linear map". And the first sentence of the Wikipedia article where "covector" redirects to is: "... a covector is a linear map from a vector space to its field of scalars". So that is why I prefer "map" to "val". --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 01:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 == proposal to rename "generalize patent val" to "uniform map" ==
@@ Line 63: / Line 77: @@
 ::: The cognitive process I mentioned above therefore leads to the reason why ''generalized patent val'' is friendly to our minds. Moreover, I like that the relationship between patent val and generalized patent val is demonstrated by the name in that one contains the other. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 22:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
+:::: We disagree about how best to explain this concept. You've convinced me that there is some virtue to the existing way of explaining it that's in the article. So I retract my proposal to replace it. Perhaps you would allow that — if I made some revisions to my way as you've recommended — there would be room for including my way of explaining it too. Eventually. But again this not my main interest here, so I'll drop the issue for now.
+:::: You've also convinced me to stop using the phrase "contradiction in terms" with respect to "non-integer EDOs". You're totally correct. Sorry for resisting, and thanks for explaining your take on that.
+:::: I'd like to call your attention to a point that I made in the original post which is that an "integer uniform map" is exactly equivalent to a "simple map"/"patent val" for the given integer. This to me is how best to achieve one name containing the other, which I do agree with you is a desirable effect that should be preserved. As I described, my approach inverts their relationship, so that it is the "integer uniform map" which is a specific type of "uniform map", rather than the other way around, where a "generalized patent val" is a generalized type of "patent val". In fact, when Dave Keenan and I were developing these proposals, it turned into somewhat of a drag-out fight, where for days I refused to budge that "integer uniform map" should be the only replacement for "patent val", while he only accepted "simple map", but we eventually came to the agreement that both terms had merit in different contexts. They are just two different helpful ways of thinking about the same structure; in contexts pertaining to tuning accuracy, "simple map" works great, and in contexts pertaining to other uniform maps, "integer uniform map" works great.  --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 01:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)