[r-t] What IS a rotation of a method?

[Matthew Frye]

On 18 Oct 2014, at 11:23, James White <jw_home at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>>> But what an ugly mess we will be in if, from our theoretical viewpoint, we do not accept that rotations of a method are (in some sense) all the same.
> 
> Perhaps yes, rotations are the same method theoretically, but allowing different names for rotations is just common sense so that we can talk simply about these things.
> 
> We will just need to keep a record of such names.

Is this not in principle the very same issue as we faced with methods that are a multiple or fraction of other methods? In that context it might make sense to go with the previously suggested option of having a single canonical definition, with alternative names that correspond to different rotations.

Actually, I'm not at all convinced by that. Do we *really* want the possibility of 12 different names for Stedman, even if they all fall under the canonical Stedman definition? In fact, can anyone think of a single time we might possibly want a rotation to bear a different name other than Grandsire/New Grandsire? The only time I can think of is Cloister/Quick Six, but neither of these seem to have ben named. I would think that any new method people would be far more happy to classify one way and then think of any rotation as being a rotation in whatever circumstance. Given this, do we think that the Grandsire/New Grandsire case is a genuinely isolated oddity rather than an example of a wider issue?

If you chose to rotate, say, Single Oxford Bob Triples to have the 1 & 3 hunting instead of the 1 & 2, would you not still think it was Single Oxford Bob Triples? Would anyone truly wish to have a different name for that?

MF