[r-t] Jump change notation poll

[Don Morrison]

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 9:35 PM Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org> wrote:
> Continuing what appears to be becoming a ringing-theory tradition,
> here's a SurveyMonkey poll on suitable notation for jump changes.
...
> I will send a summary of the results out to this list

It seems to be a subject that elicits less interest, or at least less
willingness to share opinions, than rules about method construction, as
fewer than half has many folks responded than have for most of the earlier
polls: there were only 10 responses.

The two choices "cite the full permutation" and "use pairs of places
stating which bells are jumping" were tied for most popular. Though with
only slight pluralities, garnering just 30% of the vote for favorite. If we
combine favorite and second favorite "cite the full permuation" wins, just
barely, with one more second place vote than "use pairs of places".

Both those answers do get a little more support from the two people who
answered "combine two or more" as their top choice, as in both cases they
added the comment that they thought it was "use pairs of places" and "cite
the full permutation" that should be combined, both stating that they
believed the former works well for simple cases, and the latter is a useful
fallback for more complex cases.

There was one suggestion for an additional scheme: as I understand it, it
is to work out the maximum range of positions that are implicated in jumps,
and cite that range as a full permutation within parentheses, with ordinary
stuff on either side of it. The example given was "(74653)89T" for
217465389E0T. If I understand this correctly it means Cambridge Treble Jump
Minor would be notated x3x(342)x2x(453)x4x5x4x(534)x2x(423)x3x2, which is
sort of a reverse of the cycles notation; and for really big jumps, as in
Philip Earis's example, it would degenerate into the citing the full
permutation: (234567890ET1). This does seem unambiguous, and a plausible
candidate notation.

Curiously while cycles had no votes for favorite, it had a plurality for
second favorite. In all, all four choices got enough votes that none can be
said to lack supporters. In fact, the votes are sufficiently close, and
number of responses so small, it's hard to say much of anything other than
"nothing is ruled out".

In the following the numbers of votes are first-choice /
combined-first-and-second-choice.

Full permutation: 3 / 5

Cycles: 0 / 3

Pairs of bells: 3 / 4

Compose ordinary changes: 1 / 3

Combine two or more schemes: 2 / 3

Something else: 1 / 1+



Pretty pictures and the raw data are available at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-JHGXY68D/



+ One person voted "pairs" first, "combine two or more schemes" second, but
stated "3 is my favourite so far, but there may be something better out
there" which might be a sort of an implicit additional vote for "something
else"

* If anyone is wondering how you can get 26% with 10 respondents: one did
not answer the second question.



-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will
philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize
that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble, and children respected their elders."
                              --Mary Schmich, _Chicago Post_, June 1997
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