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The second paragraph of this article presently (2017-06-05 16:42ET) talks about the machine moving to a cell, reading it, then writing into it. There is, however, no explanation why it would do so or where is the written content is coming from. The article continues with the mention of the head or tape moving left or right with no clarity as to how the choice of left or right is made. I did not delete the confusing paragraph because it does contain a lot of reference (which I did not follow). However, as it stands it is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.113.207.5 ( talk)
The "Comparison with real machines" section contains a bullet point
which I find to be both dubious and weaselly worded.
130.243.94.123 ( talk) 13:06, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The section "Comparison with real machines" consists almost entirely of misleading if not outright false statements, from beginning to end. Crazy stuff, like "Like a Turing machine, a real machine can have its storage space enlarged as needed," Uh, no; Turing machines can't/don't "enlarge" their memory. They already have an unbounded amount. Or this blooper: "There is a limit to the memory possessed by any current machine, but this limit can rise arbitrarily in time." Uh, no, not "arbitrarily", but only as much as vendors can manufacture. Ultimately limited by the number of atoms on the Earth, or Solar System, or Universe. By comparison, Turing machines have a literally unbounded amount. Or this entire paragraph: "Descriptions of real machine programs using simpler abstract models are often much more complex than descriptions using Turing machines. For example, a Turing machine describing an algorithm may have a few hundred states, while the equivalent deterministic finite automaton (DFA) on a given real machine has quadrillions. This makes the DFA representation infeasible to analyze." Each sentence of this last is patently wrong in more than one way. The errors continue onwards in later subsections of this section. Personally, I recommend nuking the entire section, and starting from scratch. But that would probably raise a hornet's nest that I don't want to engage in; so I'd rather leave this drive-by comment. Surely the regular maintainers of this article can do much better. 67.198.37.16 ( talk) 04:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
While the recently added section Turing machine#Comparison with the arithmetic model of computation is quite interesting, I'm afraid it is of undue weight here. Moreover, it confuses readers by apparently suggesting that each real number can be represented in a Turing machine. I suggest that the detailled discussion of comparison is moved to arithmetic model of computation (if not already present there), and that a one-paragraph summary is added to some appropriate section of Turing machine, without an own [sub]section header. - Jochen Burghardt ( talk) 20:21, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Hi I came here to say that I think this article’s reading level is too high. The article also assumes the reader has specialized knowledge and this makes the article incomprehensible to many who would benefit from an “explain like I’m five” approach to this subject matter. 74.101.116.31 ( talk) 10:15, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Turing machine article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2,
3Auto-archiving period: 180 days
![]() |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The second paragraph of this article presently (2017-06-05 16:42ET) talks about the machine moving to a cell, reading it, then writing into it. There is, however, no explanation why it would do so or where is the written content is coming from. The article continues with the mention of the head or tape moving left or right with no clarity as to how the choice of left or right is made. I did not delete the confusing paragraph because it does contain a lot of reference (which I did not follow). However, as it stands it is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.113.207.5 ( talk)
The "Comparison with real machines" section contains a bullet point
which I find to be both dubious and weaselly worded.
130.243.94.123 ( talk) 13:06, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
The section "Comparison with real machines" consists almost entirely of misleading if not outright false statements, from beginning to end. Crazy stuff, like "Like a Turing machine, a real machine can have its storage space enlarged as needed," Uh, no; Turing machines can't/don't "enlarge" their memory. They already have an unbounded amount. Or this blooper: "There is a limit to the memory possessed by any current machine, but this limit can rise arbitrarily in time." Uh, no, not "arbitrarily", but only as much as vendors can manufacture. Ultimately limited by the number of atoms on the Earth, or Solar System, or Universe. By comparison, Turing machines have a literally unbounded amount. Or this entire paragraph: "Descriptions of real machine programs using simpler abstract models are often much more complex than descriptions using Turing machines. For example, a Turing machine describing an algorithm may have a few hundred states, while the equivalent deterministic finite automaton (DFA) on a given real machine has quadrillions. This makes the DFA representation infeasible to analyze." Each sentence of this last is patently wrong in more than one way. The errors continue onwards in later subsections of this section. Personally, I recommend nuking the entire section, and starting from scratch. But that would probably raise a hornet's nest that I don't want to engage in; so I'd rather leave this drive-by comment. Surely the regular maintainers of this article can do much better. 67.198.37.16 ( talk) 04:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
While the recently added section Turing machine#Comparison with the arithmetic model of computation is quite interesting, I'm afraid it is of undue weight here. Moreover, it confuses readers by apparently suggesting that each real number can be represented in a Turing machine. I suggest that the detailled discussion of comparison is moved to arithmetic model of computation (if not already present there), and that a one-paragraph summary is added to some appropriate section of Turing machine, without an own [sub]section header. - Jochen Burghardt ( talk) 20:21, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Hi I came here to say that I think this article’s reading level is too high. The article also assumes the reader has specialized knowledge and this makes the article incomprehensible to many who would benefit from an “explain like I’m five” approach to this subject matter. 74.101.116.31 ( talk) 10:15, 24 March 2024 (UTC)