[Haskell-cafe] Re: Why monad tutorials don't work

Aaron Denney wnoise at ofb.net
Wed Aug 15 14:20:44 EDT 2007


On 2007-08-14, Michael Vanier <mvanier at cs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> I'm reminded of a physics teacher who was having a similar problem
> explaining the concept of tensors, until he said that "a tensor
> is something that transforms like a tensor does!".

Which is silly.  A tensor is a linear function of vectors and linear
functions of vectors.  That has implications about its transformation
properties, and anything with those transformation properties can be
used as a tensor, but this formulation gives the flexibility to say what
happens when you're using different bases for different "slots".

-- 
Aaron Denney
-><-



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