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.