Wikipedia:Featured article review/Ackermann function/archive1

Ackermann function

Article is still a featured article.

Unintelligible; probably incomprehensible to a general interest reader. Significance of the function is not well explained. The lead section is minimal. The far superior vacuous truth was removed from FA status recently. Smerdis of Tlön 18:26, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've made a number of changes to this article to (hopefully) help improve it. Admittedly, it's hard for someone not studying computational theory to understand why we should care if a function is primitive recursive or not, but I hope I've at least emphasized how really freaking enormous this function gets, and shortened/clarified some of the long meandering discussion. Feedback is appreciated. Derrick Coetzee 21:48, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Does the function have any utilitarian purpose other than serving as a test of computing power? It might also be improved by a bit more "show your work" to explain how the values of the function get so large so quickly. Smerdis of Tlön 16:32, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The function was never really intended for any practical use — it predates computers by quite a bit, in fact. It's theoretically important as a recursive function which isn't simple recursive, and it pops up in some algorithm runtimes, and that's really about it. Derrick Coetzee 17:02, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I might have found it easier to follow if the primitive recursive function article ware also in plain English. While I have a vague idea what recursion is --- life is a recursive process that has a break point determined randomly and always returns a value of 0 --- I'm not sure what recursion is primitive, what isn't, and why non-primitive recursion is important. Smerdis of Tlön 18:05, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The concept of a primitive recursive function is rather complex; the main idea is that almost all practical functions we use are primitive recursive, and in fact it's hard to come up with a function that isn't. Maybe I'll add this to that article. Derrick Coetzee 18:20, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. Could do with more polishing, but good enough. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:03, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)