Re: [lojban] the 17 tallest men

[Jim Carter <jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU>]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> But Lojban has grammatical setness and massness, so we can say "The subset 
> which, considered as a mass, is tallest among the 17-element subsets". 

Aaaa, this again!  A mass doesn't have properties coherent with its 
members.  For example, a sports team (mass) wins even though its members 
individually don't win.  Particularly, a purely subset type of mass doesn't 
have height, no matter what properties its members have.

I would approach this problem along these lines:

<pedantic excess=maximal>
The 17 tallest men =
the members of the tail, of length 17, of the list gotten by sorting 
"the" men by height
<comment>when you sort a quantitative measure, the natural order puts
the larger values at the end.</comment>
</pedantic>

Your most efficient approach to extremal subsets is through sorting.
And you have to remember to deliver the result as members in extension, or 
as a set, or when applicable, as a list or a mass, according to how the
result will be used in the containing sentence.


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