Re: Ullrichism; Was: Constructibility of X -> X^2 bijection

Stephen J. Herschkorn wrote:

David C. Ullrich wrote:



(iii) The test asked the student to prove the following. although
Spanier was unaware of the fact that some of the statements
were false.

[...]if (iii) "always" happened that just indicates that
Spanier was not competent to write tests.


[...] Better to use a different choice of words and the conditional. For example, "If (iii) always had happened, then that would have indicated that Spanier tended not to check his tests very well."


Correction: "Conditional" was not the right word here, for David's original sentence was in the conditional form. I think the word I want is "subjunctive," but even then I am not sure. (How appropriate!) On the 'net, I find this sometimes called a "conditional sentence of type III," but that seems to be prevalent only in the study of English as a foreign language.


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Stephen J. Herschkorn sjherschko@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Math (but not English) Tutor on the Internet and in Central New Jersey and Manhattan

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