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Napawrimo?
Nov. 7th, 2003 02:13 pmSo much for doing a nano this month! The paper I'm working on is exploding in a frighteningly thesisy kind of way, so it looks like the next month or two is going to have to be spent working on it. As I'm trying to get it into DCC next year (Designing Correct Circuits, part of ETAPS), I really have to put the hammer down. The same material, possibly extended a bit further, could wind up forming a significant chunk of my thesis. I feel I'm writing up already, and I'm only half way through my first term. It seems weird, although several people have said that starting early is a good idea. but this early? What if I keep going and end up with a mostly complete thesis a few months from now? I know what my work rate is generally like, so I have to say that this seems possible.
Writing maths feels so slow compared with writing English. I have a funny feeling that my brain is capable of emitting only so much meaning per minute, so anything as terse as typed set theory (the `language' of the maths in my paper) seems to really put the brakes on.
Never mind, though. The paper is coming together remarkably quickly. Alan (my PhD supervisor) seems pretty keen on the idea, so is pushing me to do a far more complete exposition of the ideas than I think I would probably attempted under my own steam. Alan is a brilliant supervisor -- he's making this so much more than it would otherwise have been. The paper is not going to be small, terse though it is. What started as a neat idea for a 5-value 'logic' has sprawled into a whole class of abstractions (that form a lattice with Galois connections between them, should that be meaningful to anyone reading this!). At one end, there's something that looks like an alternative take on interval temporal logic, at the other there's something that looks like 'Boolean logic with unknowns'. The 5-value logic sits neatly into the lattice, but it has spawned a few children (not to mention parents and grandparents).
I must not, however, use the 'L' word. 'Logic', that is. People will get miffed, even though other people do it (e.g. the 5-value logic used in the D-algorithm to generate test cases that identify stuck-at faults in digital logic circuits).
Anyway, back to paper hacking...
Writing maths feels so slow compared with writing English. I have a funny feeling that my brain is capable of emitting only so much meaning per minute, so anything as terse as typed set theory (the `language' of the maths in my paper) seems to really put the brakes on.
Never mind, though. The paper is coming together remarkably quickly. Alan (my PhD supervisor) seems pretty keen on the idea, so is pushing me to do a far more complete exposition of the ideas than I think I would probably attempted under my own steam. Alan is a brilliant supervisor -- he's making this so much more than it would otherwise have been. The paper is not going to be small, terse though it is. What started as a neat idea for a 5-value 'logic' has sprawled into a whole class of abstractions (that form a lattice with Galois connections between them, should that be meaningful to anyone reading this!). At one end, there's something that looks like an alternative take on interval temporal logic, at the other there's something that looks like 'Boolean logic with unknowns'. The 5-value logic sits neatly into the lattice, but it has spawned a few children (not to mention parents and grandparents).
I must not, however, use the 'L' word. 'Logic', that is. People will get miffed, even though other people do it (e.g. the 5-value logic used in the D-algorithm to generate test cases that identify stuck-at faults in digital logic circuits).
Anyway, back to paper hacking...