To explain the anti-reasoning behind ‘like everlasting tape’ DIASER advertising slogan; this post touches on some mathematics and computer science concepts starting with a small advertising campaign. I needed a way to quickly and cleanly communicate to systems engineers and scientists the purpose of DIASER. I drew a sketch of a strip of tape, that which DIASER is designed to replace, leading into three nodes from a larger data store. The sketch became the image below and the banner logo for www.diaser.org.uk.
never ending tape sketch
I was investigating the deterministic and non-deterministic properties of the DIASER algorithm. My systems analyst studies with Red Hat, an architect course, had been teaching me some stochastic, non-deterministic analysis techniques. To help, a truth table exists to improve DIASER analysis on this blog-site called Data Vitality. In computer science and mathematics the Turing Machine describes a model where extremely complex calculations are theoretically possible. Systems can be modelled and can incorporate random elements or processes and are therefore non-deterministic stochastic models otherwise they are deterministic. I am a systems administrator / programmer learning about stochastic analysis, building models which cope with random variations over time. You know how random computer systems can appear sometimes. The weather is complex in Britain due to many random variable values depending on which variables you know of, can or choose to measure and so is the queue at the local super market, seemingly unrelated systems. Perhaps painting a picture is a stochastic activity, an attempt to incorporate and communicate the unknowns of the artist’s vision, an abstraction.
Computer language scientists work with finite instructions sets. The other part of Turing’s model includes an infinite tape consisting of cells to read and write to. Like DIASER can store an infinite amount of data given infinite time. I double checked the Turing machine definition some weeks after I created the DIASER slogan. But given the stochastic nature of my work the, systems administrator / engineering “para-logic” probably works, doesn’t it?
DLB