[Haskell-cafe] Re: Overloading functions based on arguments?

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 20 Feb 2009, at 3:24 am, John A. De Goes wrote:
>> It is precisely this abuse of notation which makes, for instance,  
>> statistics textbooks impossible to read (without already knowing  
>> the material).
>
> Hmmm, I don't find statistics books difficult to read.

I'm interested in a technique called Correspondence Analysis.
I recently bought a book about it.  The author comes from the
UK, but was trained in CA at its home in France.  And the book
is very nearly unreadable, thanks in part to some of the
strangest overloading I've seen.  I don't have it handy, but
things like f(i) and f(j) having different types is just the start.
(No, this is not dependent typing.  Which type the result is
depends on the *name* of the argument, not its value!)