With a metric you can really go to town, otherwise it is just abstract nonsense.
Jennifer Tour ChayesI described to my patent lawyer our new algorithm-that I was hoping to patent- about detecting clustering, that involved three probabilities ฮฑ , ฮฒ, ฮณ that add-up to 1, and mentioned that it is like "a three-sided coin". A few days later he came up with a patent application for a "three-sided-coin".
Jennifer Tour ChayesTheoretical Computer Science is just as useless as everything we mathematicians do.
Jennifer Tour Chayes