<story><title>Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other</title><url>http://nautil.us/issue/89/the-dark-side/why-mathematicians-should-stop-naming-things-after-each-other</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>knome</author><text>Tim Sort, Hamming Codes, Huffman Coding, RSA keys, LZW encoding, Duff&amp;#x27;s Device, Bloom Filter, Carmack&amp;#x27;s Reverse, awk, linux, git. We have a lot of things named after those that discovered, invented  or popularized a structure or technique. Certainly nowhere near as commonly as does mathematics, I will agree.&lt;p&gt;In CS, no doubt, we often end up on the other end, where a single term means different things in different contexts and beginners may get confused at our reuse of terminology. Often the reuse gives some metaphorical understanding to the newcomer, even if it largely leads them astray in the details.</text></item><item><author>ardit33</author><text>I Disagree with you,   in Computer Science we have things like: &amp;quot;Quick Sort&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Merge Sort&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Map&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Hashtable&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;LRU&amp;quot;, etc... etc...&lt;p&gt;They are much more descriptive and easy to remember, even though the Algorithms can be complex themselves.  Event the name &amp;quot;Boolean&amp;quot;, could be changed to &amp;quot;Conditional&amp;quot;... and be even more readable. Also, Dijkstra algorithm can be generalized to &amp;quot;Shortest Path Algorithm&amp;quot; (there can be more than one).&lt;p&gt;Math, and physics to some degree, have become self-referential to the point that start becoming more esoteric magic black books to beginners...&lt;p&gt;While CS was born out of Math folks, and unfortunately has adopted some of the same esoteric symbolics, I hope Computer Science doesn&amp;#x27;t follow that path on the long term, otherwise it will become divorced from day to day real life applications.&lt;p&gt;Let me give you a clear example:&lt;p&gt;Now, imagine if we called Double Linked Lists as &amp;quot;Darombolo lists&amp;quot;, or whoever invented it. (I made up that name), Double Linked List is very easy to visualize and remember. &amp;quot;Giacomo Darombolo List&amp;quot;, is not, and just adds to &amp;#x27;must cram&amp;#x2F;memorize&amp;#x27; things to make things work.....&lt;p&gt;I personally don&amp;#x27;t like &amp;quot;cramming&amp;quot; useless trivia in order to work in my field.  I hope Computer Science divorces from Math, and takes its own path to more logical naming of things and less useless symbols used in it.&lt;p&gt;It is like the whole field suffers because the authors&amp;#x27; Narcissism, that they must name things after them.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Hard disagree.&lt;p&gt;Once you get to the advanced levels of &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; field, terminology being &amp;quot;accessible&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t really matter, but being precise &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Areas like philosophy and law actually &lt;i&gt;suffer&lt;/i&gt; in my opinion when they overload common words with uncommon meanings, or descend into weird disambiguations that depend on suffixes.&lt;p&gt;For example, in philosophy there&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;contractarianism&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;contractualism&amp;quot;, and trying to remember which is the general term and which refers to a specific theory drives me nuts. (If &amp;quot;contractualism&amp;quot; were just known as &amp;quot;Scanlon&amp;#x27;s theory&amp;quot; it would be a lot easier.)&lt;p&gt;Naming things after their creator is actually super-helpful because it&amp;#x27;s really easy to disambiguate, helps situate things historically, and once you&amp;#x27;re at that level there often isn&amp;#x27;t a single unique word or phrase that can easily encapsulate the idea anyways and isn&amp;#x27;t easily confused with something else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>labster</author><text>Bloom filters prove OP’s point though. The first few times I heard the term, I wondered how a Photoshop filter to blur things could possibly apply to the problem. Maybe if it was called an exclusion filter it would be less jargony, I don’t know; naming things is hard.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mathematicians should stop naming things after each other</title><url>http://nautil.us/issue/89/the-dark-side/why-mathematicians-should-stop-naming-things-after-each-other</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>knome</author><text>Tim Sort, Hamming Codes, Huffman Coding, RSA keys, LZW encoding, Duff&amp;#x27;s Device, Bloom Filter, Carmack&amp;#x27;s Reverse, awk, linux, git. We have a lot of things named after those that discovered, invented  or popularized a structure or technique. Certainly nowhere near as commonly as does mathematics, I will agree.&lt;p&gt;In CS, no doubt, we often end up on the other end, where a single term means different things in different contexts and beginners may get confused at our reuse of terminology. Often the reuse gives some metaphorical understanding to the newcomer, even if it largely leads them astray in the details.</text></item><item><author>ardit33</author><text>I Disagree with you,   in Computer Science we have things like: &amp;quot;Quick Sort&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Merge Sort&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Map&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Hashtable&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;LRU&amp;quot;, etc... etc...&lt;p&gt;They are much more descriptive and easy to remember, even though the Algorithms can be complex themselves.  Event the name &amp;quot;Boolean&amp;quot;, could be changed to &amp;quot;Conditional&amp;quot;... and be even more readable. Also, Dijkstra algorithm can be generalized to &amp;quot;Shortest Path Algorithm&amp;quot; (there can be more than one).&lt;p&gt;Math, and physics to some degree, have become self-referential to the point that start becoming more esoteric magic black books to beginners...&lt;p&gt;While CS was born out of Math folks, and unfortunately has adopted some of the same esoteric symbolics, I hope Computer Science doesn&amp;#x27;t follow that path on the long term, otherwise it will become divorced from day to day real life applications.&lt;p&gt;Let me give you a clear example:&lt;p&gt;Now, imagine if we called Double Linked Lists as &amp;quot;Darombolo lists&amp;quot;, or whoever invented it. (I made up that name), Double Linked List is very easy to visualize and remember. &amp;quot;Giacomo Darombolo List&amp;quot;, is not, and just adds to &amp;#x27;must cram&amp;#x2F;memorize&amp;#x27; things to make things work.....&lt;p&gt;I personally don&amp;#x27;t like &amp;quot;cramming&amp;quot; useless trivia in order to work in my field.  I hope Computer Science divorces from Math, and takes its own path to more logical naming of things and less useless symbols used in it.&lt;p&gt;It is like the whole field suffers because the authors&amp;#x27; Narcissism, that they must name things after them.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Hard disagree.&lt;p&gt;Once you get to the advanced levels of &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; field, terminology being &amp;quot;accessible&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t really matter, but being precise &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Areas like philosophy and law actually &lt;i&gt;suffer&lt;/i&gt; in my opinion when they overload common words with uncommon meanings, or descend into weird disambiguations that depend on suffixes.&lt;p&gt;For example, in philosophy there&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;contractarianism&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;contractualism&amp;quot;, and trying to remember which is the general term and which refers to a specific theory drives me nuts. (If &amp;quot;contractualism&amp;quot; were just known as &amp;quot;Scanlon&amp;#x27;s theory&amp;quot; it would be a lot easier.)&lt;p&gt;Naming things after their creator is actually super-helpful because it&amp;#x27;s really easy to disambiguate, helps situate things historically, and once you&amp;#x27;re at that level there often isn&amp;#x27;t a single unique word or phrase that can easily encapsulate the idea anyways and isn&amp;#x27;t easily confused with something else.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ben_w</author><text>Page rank. I thought git was named by Linus, and to the extent that it is named after him, it was self awareness of his reputation?&lt;p&gt;I remember when Duff&amp;#x27;s Device was a neat trick; does anyone still use it these days?&lt;p&gt;Edit: a &lt;i&gt;neat&lt;/i&gt; trick, not a &lt;i&gt;bear&lt;/i&gt; trick.</text></comment>