Template:Did you know nominations/Sparse Distributed Memory

Sparse Distributed Memory

 * ... that Sparse Distributed Memory is used to mathematically model the human long-term memory?
 * ALT1:... that you can mathematically model forgetting using Sparse Distributed Memory?

Created by OneThousandTwentyFour (talk). Self nom at 21:12, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Symbol possible vote.svg The article in currently ineligible for DYK, because it is so poorly written. The article apparently deals with a particularly content-addressable memory structure that is used as a model for long-term memory, especially for human semantic-memory. Its first "section" contains exactly one sentence: "The general formula is $$2^n$$ where n is the number of dimensions of the space, and $$2^n$$ is the number of feasible memory items", which tells little to the reader. In the example, I suspect that each sentence should be parsed for semantic information, so that some relation between this "formula" and the "example" be suggested.

The lede confuses the model and the modelled. There are typographical errors with spacing. The split infinitive should be avoided in the DYK blurb. The article seems very short 2000 characters, which is only 500 over the minimum size. The formatting of the sources often has just a title linked to a technical report, without mentioning that the working paper was published in a conference proceedings; use Google Scholar for publication data. Kiefer .Wolfowitz 09:38, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: The nominator has expanded the article a few days after these comments were made but did not leave any comment here. To be honest, I do not believe the article in its current state is ready for Wikipedia, let alone the main page. It omits core parts of the explanation, e.g. why so many dimensions are useful, and it confuses the matter to an extent that, even with a bit of background in mathematics, it becomes totally incomprehensible. For instance, the aim is to retrieve about 1000 bits of information, not 2^1000. We cannot store the latter amount for quite a few years millennia to come, and we will therefore not very soon need an algorithm to retrieve it. 2^1000 is a lot, see chessboard paradox. I thought of a hoax, but Kanerva's paper has over 600 citations. Suggest to close this nomination as unsuccessful. --Pgallert (talk) 20:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)