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>From: mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel)

References: <1111@dicome.UUCP>
Reply-To: mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel)
Summary: Yes, but what about precision?
Posted: Sun Nov  2 19:24:17 1986


 In article<894@cuuxb.UUCP> mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel) writes:

...(quoting my article here)
>>The goal of DIGITAL then would be to
>>represent things 100% accurately.  
...
(he replies)
>Anything measurable can only so be by a process known as "measurement".

>Measurements have a given (that is, finite) precision.

>=> Any measured quanity has a finite precision.  

>Digital systems can represent exactly, and compute exactly, to a
>given, finite, precision.
>Analog computations cannot be more accurate than the measurements
>used to generate the values used for computation, and therefore
>cannont be any more precise than a digitally computed result carrying
>the precision of the original measurements.

>So, in practice, both analog and digital are limited by the precision
>of the measurements used to get the quantities with which computation
>is being performed.

So true Mark, but measurement is not the same as the actual "thing" the
measurement represents.  I am viewing ANALOG as a process, something
really happening, like an element decaying or a leaf growing, or even
as current flowing through a conductor not as the
measurement of these real events.  In fact that was the point 
of my entire long winded and utterly mute article; Analog (as I see it)
can be a real thing or process, but digital is not a real thing, it is
in itself a measurement.  Now I am trying not to limit my analogies to
electrical circuits, but by what I see other people posting, I have totally
missed the point of this discussion by trying to look at anything other
than analog/digital DEVICES.
		Thanks for following up.


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Thu Nov  6 10:58:40 CST 1986
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