12 years of Python and only at v2.2

[Michael Hudson]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> writes:

> Greg Ewing fed this fish to the penguins on Wednesday 04 December 2002 
> 06:03 pm:
> 
> > That's still monotonic. ("Monotonic" doesn't mean
> > "regular", it just means "always going in the same
> > direction".)
> > 
> 
>         "Monotonic" is, itself, a hard term to pin down... Out of three 
> dictionaries in my possession, only the OED had any definitions that 
> were not tied to the literal "single tone". [I would like to state that 
> one of the other two dictionaries is a 4" thick unabridged, not the 
> more common "college" editions]

Here we're talking maths.  I don't see the mathematical definition of
continuity in the OED either...

>         The OED secondary definition was of a function which neither increased 
> nor decreased, or if it did increase/decrease, it did so in such a 
> manner (nothing like a recursive definition) -- which I interpret to 
> mean no increase/decrease in steps.

I think the OED definition is a strange way of putting it.

f monotonic <=> (x>=y => f(x) >= f(y))

In the case at hand f was "Python version" as a function of time.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  I think if we have the choice, I'd rather we didn't explicitly put
  flaws in the reST syntax for the sole purpose of not insulting the
  almighty.                                    -- /will on the doc-sig