Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!amdahl!key!sjc
From: sjc@key.COM (Steve Correll)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Historical architectural advances??
Message-ID: <2222@key.COM>
Date: 29 Oct 90 23:36:58 GMT
References: <8052@scolex.sco.COM> <2750@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <8139@scolex.sco.COM> <6547@uceng.UC.EDU>
Organization: Key Computer Labs, Fremont, CA
Lines: 40

>In article <8139@scolex.sco.COM> seanf (Sean Fagan) writes:
>Using your fingers to do addition is an incredible performance/price ratio
>(since price is 0).

In article <6547@uceng.UC.EDU>, dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes:
> If the price of your fingers is zero, does that mean I can hire you to
> cut yours off for zero dollars? How much money would you accept in
> exchange for agreeing to give up your fingers? That is their price.
> 
> If the price of fingers was zero, nobody would have invented computers.
> 
> Adding on your fingers is incredibly expensive. If anyone doubts this,
> let them try to run a company that way.

Hmm, time for an armchair-economist alert?

I agree with Dan the price of your fingers is probably very high.

But I agree with Sean that the marginal price of being able to add by counting
on your fingers (that is, the value you place on being able to add with them
given that you have the use of them for other purposes) is probably rather low.
Assuming I still let you use your fingers to feed yourself, button your
clothes, and enter data into a calculator, I probably won't have to pay much to
get you to promise that you'll never count on your fingers again. That's their
marginal price.

It's incorrect to use the total price of a resource, rather than the marginal
price, when estimating price-performance for a marginal use of the resource.

Addition by counting on fingers is expensive for a business not because an
insurance company will pay a lot for the loss of them--after all, for a
pittance, you can hire a lot of third-world fingers to help you count things,
without cutting anybody's fingers off. Rather, finger addition is slow and
error-prone compared with calculators, computers, and pencils. In fact,
competition from such superior technology is one of the factors which depresses
the marginal value of fingers for purposes of addition...

Clear? Now we return you to the other sense of "digital computation". :-)
-- 
sjc@key.com or ...{sun,pyramid}!pacbell!key!sjc 		Steve Correll