[r-t] Discovery v creation (was Ben Constant's Yorkshire Royal)

[Don Morrison]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Ted Steele <ted.steele at tesco.net> wrote:
> I think it's probably fairly well accepted now that all methods exist in
> theory and only remain to be discovered in practice. If this is true of
> methods then why not also of the essentially simple extensions of methods
> into peals by means of calls?

One could just as easily argue that all novels of length less than 1
billion English words also exist in theory, and only remain to be
discovered in practice.

And just like that case it might be illuminating to estimate how many
potential change ringing compositions there are, and how that compares
to estimates of the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Big
Bang. Or to whatever your favorite example of an estimate of a
cosmological quantity is.

We're change ringers. We're supposed to have an intuitive grasp of
combinatorial growth, aren't we? :-)



-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
'The Panglossian pessimist says, "Isn't it a shame that this is, after
all, the best of all possible worlds!"'
                             -- Daniel Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_