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From: plate@dicome.UUCP (Douglas B. Plate)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Analog/Digital
Message-ID: <1116@dicome.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Nov-86 13:57:51 EST
Article-I.D.: dicome.1116
Posted: Thu Nov  6 13:57:51 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Nov-86 05:08:14 EST
References: <1111@dicome.UUCP> <894@cuuxb.UUCP>
Reply-To: plate@dicome.UUCP (Douglas B. Plate)
Organization: DICOMED Corp., Minneapolis
Lines: 51

>From: mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel)

References: <1111@dicome.UUCP>
Reply-To: mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel)
Summary: Yes, but what about precision?
Posted: Sun Nov  2 19:24:17 1986


 In article<894@cuuxb.UUCP> mwm@cuuxb.UUCP (Marc W. Mengel) writes:

...(quoting my article here)
>>The goal of DIGITAL then would be to
>>represent things 100% accurately.  
...
(he replies)
>Anything measurable can only so be by a process known as "measurement".

>Measurements have a given (that is, finite) precision.

>=> Any measured quanity has a finite precision.  

>Digital systems can represent exactly, and compute exactly, to a
>given, finite, precision.
>Analog computations cannot be more accurate than the measurements
>used to generate the values used for computation, and therefore
>cannont be any more precise than a digitally computed result carrying
>the precision of the original measurements.

>So, in practice, both analog and digital are limited by the precision
>of the measurements used to get the quantities with which computation
>is being performed.

So true Mark, but measurement is not the same as the actual "thing" the
measurement represents.  I am viewing ANALOG as a process, something
really happening, like an element decaying or a leaf growing, or even
as current flowing through a conductor not as the
measurement of these real events.  In fact that was the point 
of my entire long winded and utterly mute article; Analog (as I see it)
can be a real thing or process, but digital is not a real thing, it is
in itself a measurement.  Now I am trying not to limit my analogies to
electrical circuits, but by what I see other people posting, I have totally
missed the point of this discussion by trying to look at anything other
than analog/digital DEVICES.
		Thanks for following up.


-- 
Thu Nov  6 10:58:40 CST 1986
%	Douglas B. Plate		P.O. Box 246			
%	DICOMED Corp.			Minneapolis, MN 55440-0246	
%	12000 Portland Av. So		U.S.A. 		(612) 885-3000