Re: action-152: "subsetting"

Hi Kerry

I find the notion of subsets of datasets a reasonable one. I acknowledge
that 'subsetting' is a relatively ugly neologism (though there are a lot
worse made-up words at use in the world of technology!) But I'd be happy to
use your suggested alternative of 'extract' and 'extracting'.

Cheers

Bill



On 29 March 2016 at 13:10, Kerry Taylor <kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au> wrote:

> I have an objection to the use of the word ”subsetting”, prominent in the
> spatial community and leaking also into other “big data” technology
> discussions. It seems to have some heritage in the statistical community,
> too.
>
> I partly dislike it because it is not a word, but also because the notion
> of a ‘subset’ feels wrong, as it treats a ‘dataset’ as an unstructured
> ‘set’ of things, whereas this is very rarely the case when “subsetting” is
> required.
>
> The formal (and widely understood) mathematical notion of sets seems
> inappropriate.
>
> Normally, the known structure is a very important part of the “subsetting”
> operation.
>
>
>
> I do not think that “subsetting”  carries the intended meaning to the
> audience for whom our writing is directed – at least not to the “webby but
> not spatial expert” audience. I note ( probably due to our influence) DWBP
> is now also speaking of ‘subsetting’.
>
>
>
> I have some suggested alternatives I raise for consideration by the SDW,
> ordered best-first in my opinion.
>
>
>
> Noun     Verb
>
> extract  extracting
>
> snippet  snipping
>
> selection selecting
>
> snip  snipping
>
>
>
>
>
> --Kerry
>
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