Questions tagged [terminology]
Questions about how specific notions have to be understood as well as conventions of notation.
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Results of a Program After Call By Reference Vs. Call By Value-Result
I have a question that I am trying to work through. I have a program:
...
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Name of class of errors where the real state differs from the recorded state?
Is there a name for the class of software errors that arise from the fact that the software believes something wrong about the state of the world?
(Allow me a bit of anthropomorphization of software, ...
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Computability = Enumerating a sequence in the particular order?
In the paper "Computability by Probabilistic Machines" by K. de Leeuw, E. F. Moore, C. E. Shannon, and N. Shapiro (in Claude E. Shannon: Collected Papers , IEEE, 1993, pp.742-771), a ...
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Estimating the number of elements shared in two sets using a random sample
Suppose we have two sets $A$ and $B$. The sets share some number of elements between them, but within each set, any item appears at most once. We want to determine how many elements they share in ...
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Is there an equivalent to "car" and "cdr" for "snoc"?
Note: This question assumes familiarity with cons-style linked lists (e.g., from Lisp or Scheme).
It also assumes familiarity with snoc-style lists. Snoc is like cons, except it appends elements to ...
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Does there exist terminology to discern NFA states and NFA-transformed-into-DFA state?
I can't find this from surface search in the literature
When one observes/simulates NFA after processing several characters, one has to consider both "internal states of NFA" (individual ...
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Clarifications about tree-width definition
I have read the definition of treewidth/tree-decomposition both in Wikipedia and in here:
https://medium.com/@karlrombauts/treewidth-how-all-graphs-are-trees-in-disguise-ec699b69e2fb
I'm finding ...
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What's the difference between "convex/non-convex optimization" and "quadratic programming"?
I'd like to start by clarifying I'm by no means an expert in any of this, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Convex and Non-convex Optimization are subfields of mathematical optimization ...
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Finite State Machine without recursion
I have found utility in state machines that do not have the complexity of recursion: no self or ancestral transitions.
Is there a name for this sub-category of FSMs? Are they commonly used or ...
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How can we find a shortest closed walk passing through all vertices?
How can we find a walk with the minimal length starting from a vertex $v$, passing through all vertices and returning back to $v$?
We allow vertices and edges to be repeated along the walk. The ...
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Why is the heap data structure called 'heap'?
The term "heap" has majorly two meanings in computer science -
The "heap" memory in the context of memory management.
The "heap" data structure as the representation of ...
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Correct Term for describing "diamond" subgraphs in a Directed Acyclic Graph
I am trying to research handling a specific type of possible subgraph in directed acyclic graphs.
However, I am struggling to find the correct term to use.
If we consider the subgraph S to be in a DAG ...
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What is a heuristic in human computer interaction?
I have found multiple definitions of what a heuristic is, and I have found multiple computer science-related definitions.
In my university course, the lectures cite the Nielson Norman Group defining a ...
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relation based on a given partial order - does it have a name?
Let $P$ be a partial order on $X.$ Does the relation $E(P)=$ { $(x,y)\in (X\times X)\setminus P:P$ $\cup$ { $(x,y)$ } is a partial order on $X$ } have a name? If not, what's a good thing to call it?
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Name for algorithms whose runtime only depends on the problem size?
I'm looking for the name of the family of algorithms whose exact runtime is dependent only on the size of the input. An example of such an algorithm would be naive $O(n^3)$ matrix multiplication. If ...
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Name for a synchronous process that can buffer async tasks and then release
I have an async process that receives a message then post the content to another service and acknowledges the message.
To improve on the efficiency I want to batch the messages together, but can't ...
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What is terminlogy missing from this list of words and phrases pertaining to string-matching and string-alignment?
I am looking for a long list of words/terms which are related to aligning one string to another.
String Metric
Edit-Distance
Bioinformatics
Needleman–Wunsch Algorithm
Sequence Alignment
Global ...
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Does the even-odd rule ever have false positives for deciding a point in a complex polygon?
The wikipedia for even-odd rule says
On a simple curve, the even–odd rule reduces to a decision algorithm for the point in polygon problem.
On a complex polygon, there are clearly false negatives in ...
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What are Funges?
I am currently reading up about esoteric programming languages and came across a COS theory question stated as follows:
Esoteric programming languages can be categorised in a variety of different ...
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Is frontend slang term is it used in teaching in univ
I have a question : is the term front-end in this context phpmyadmin is frontend for mysql slang is it taught in academy in this context I don't want to use slang term
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Why is there a difference between the meaning of the word 'statement' in programming and linguistics?
In linguistics, the word 'statement' means something that is true or false, closer to a declarative sentence, but in programming, the meaning is closer to an imperative sentence.
What is the reason ...
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The relationship between a perfect binary tree and a complete & full binary tree
I am reading the book "Cracking the coding interview". In Chapter 4 they cover basic tree concepts.
It says there that a complete binary tree is a binary tree in which every level of the ...
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What is the name of the problem or technique used to quantify a given entity based on its properties?
I have the following idea:
Suppose a device D performing a set of tasks T1-Tn.
Each task Ti has 3 properties: time of execution(E), amount of memory needed(M) and priority(P).
...
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Is possible to have a "pointer" to a tree node in a functional language?
Suppose I have the following structure definition in C:
struct node {
int value;
struct node *parent, *left, *right;
}
If I want to represent a specific ...
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Array access is O(1) implies a fixed index size, which implies O(1) array traversal?
Arrays are generally presented as data structures with $\Theta(N)$ traversal and $\Theta(1)$ random element access. However, this seems inconsistent:
if array access is really $\Theta(1)$, this means ...
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Is there a notation for types?
Is there a notation for statements like the following:
If both operands are of type int, then the result is of type int. If ...
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Is There a Term for "Factoring" a Graph by an Equivalence Relation on Nodes?
I have a coding problem I'm running into that feels like it's solved:
Given a (directed) graph, and an equivalence relation on nodes, merge the equivalent nodes in a way that preserves the graph ...
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Is copying and pasting a sort of object embedding?
If I copy a picture and paste it into Microsoft Word, would there be the difference if I embedded the same picture into another Word file ? Are they both object embedding?(As the object is saved in ...
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What is the formalism used to describe optional arguments called?
Most command line tools have an usage described by using square brackets for optional parts and just writing out required parts (like in regexes) for example:
foo [opt1[opt2...]] req1 req2 [opt3...]
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Does a straightforward algorithm refer to the algorithm which intuitively solves a specific problem?
I'm trying to figure out what is a straightforward algorithm.
The following pseudocode comes from section 4.2 of "Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition By Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson,...
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How can I generate all combinations of 2 sets of unique numbers? How are those called?
I want to generate 2 sets from N elements.
Sets must be unique in the combination of sets
Numbers must not repeat across the 2 sets
Sets can have any amount of numbers, but must not be empty
...
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How to find the minimum number of elements to distinguish several given sets?
Given $n$ distinct sets $S_1, S_2, \cdots, S_n$, how to find a set $X$ such that $X \cap S_1, X \cap S_2, \cdots, X \cap S_n$ are still distinct, and the size of $X$ is minimum?
For example, given $\{...
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Is there a word for a property of an algorithm where the output of the algorithm does not depend on the order of the input?
I'm looking for a word to describe an algorithm that takes an ordered list as input, where the output depends on the content of the list but not the order. A sorting algorithm on integers would be an ...
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What is a computational problem?
I'm reading Sipser's "introduction to the theory of computation" book. Even though in many places the phrase "computational problem" appears there is no definition of it. How is it ...
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what's the differenece between finite state automaton and finite state automata
Upon googling all I get is the definition of finite-state automaton but what's the difference between it and finite-state automata or are they the same
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Is there a standard or model or taxonomy of programming languages different than machine-threshold-highlevel?
I understand that there are three types of programming languages:
Machine languages
Assembly languages
high-level languages
And that:
Machine languages have no abstraction
Assembly language have ...
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Set, then get, or first get, then set?
In some abstract programming languages there is a concept "setter and getter".
Generalizing, should this be the opposite, i.e. "Getter and setter"?
I would theorize that one should ...
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What is the etymology of "swizzle"?
The word swizzle can refer to an operation performed in GPU algorithms:
[The] ability to compose vectors by arbitrarily rearranging and combining components of other vectors.
Swizzle (computer ...
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Is try...catch a control flow pattern?
Is try...catch a control flow pattern such as if-than-else-elseif or ...
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What does "lambda terms modulo convertibility" mean?
In "The Lambda Calculus - Its Syntax and Semantics" by H.P. Barendregt (WorldCat) is this statement, the first sentence of chapter 2 after the introduction chapter, so in a way this sets the ...
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What does "terms modulo" mean? [duplicate]
In "The Lambda Calculus - Its Syntax and Semantics" by H.P. Barendregt (WorldCat) the term "term modulo" is used, E.g.
The principal object of study in the λ-calculus is the set ...
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Is the Berkeley tutorial on Fibonacci trees using wrong figures?
I'm confused about the figures in a Berkeley tutorial on Fibonacci trees, which depicts fibtree(2) as
and fibtree(3) as
I thought fibtree(3) looks like the following
(the figure is adapted from ...
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What is the name of this content-addressing scheme?
Git seems to use the two most significant hex digits of a content hash as a directory name for content-addressable objects. The same two digits are left out of normal file names. I'm assuming the ...
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Real life examples of *zero* weight edges in graphs
The meaning of edges with zero weight in a weighted graph questions me for a long time, and I even asked a related question previously.
Yet, when I recently read here a question on real life example ...
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Understanding P, NP with an example decision problem
I was reading the definitions of p vs np in [this post] (What is the definition of P, NP, NP-complete and NP-hard?) and I was wondering about how to classify the example decision problem where you ...
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What is the outermost class 2^Σ* referring to on the Extended Chomsky Hierarchy?
After having searched a bit, it seems I can't find terminology or references for this outermost class, 2Σ* in blue -- see below. What is it describing?
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What does it mean to 'provide' an API call?
So I have a database pre-loaded with data related to food recipes and the assignment says:
'Provide an API call that allows us to specify an ingredient or set of ingredients and return full recipes ...
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Are bits (0/1) named "characters" anywhere in the literature?
I know that each character ("in the macro level") is comprised of at least two bits ("in the micro level").
But are these bits of this "micro, electrical-logical level" ...
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What is BB(n) terminology precisely saying about symbols, states, space, and steps involved?
This question is mainly about the clarification of the terminology BB(n), not how busy beavers work. It seems common to refer to busy beaver numbers like ...
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What makes 'interrupt vectors' vectors?
I've recently been learning about interrupt vectors, partly from this Wikipedia page.
I've understood that different processors will have different types of interrupts, and the interrupt vector table ...
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