Amateur makes history

[HermanHiddema]

Ales Cieply tried to impose a PIN numbering system in his Progor ratings, and he kept it up for a longish time, but he seems to have given up in 2008. The problems he had (and frequently - I know because I had to field most of the questions) were things like an Oriental name being written differently in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, old Japanese, old Chinese or wrongly (Rui Naiwei's name is almost always written wrongly). Whenever he met a name that was new to him, he didn't know if it was a new player or just a spelling he hadn't seen. Often he assumed a new player and made an entry accordingly in the database, only to have to unravel it later once he discovered it was an old player. It's easy to imagine the huge amount of work this takes, and why he eventually grew sick of it.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of a numbering system, and everything to do with a lack of language specific knowledge on the part of Ales. Had Ales chosen to use names instead of numbers, the same issue would have cropped up just as often, and with exactly the same outcome.

Everyone and their mother is using numbering systems everywhere. SSNs, bank accounts, license plates, house numbers, zip/postal codes, phone numbers, etc, etc, etc. There is a good reason for that. It is efficient and prevents errors.

[topazg]

Ales Cieply tried to impose a PIN numbering system in his Progor ratings, and he kept it up for a longish time, but he seems to have given up in 2008. The problems he had (and frequently - I know because I had to field most of the questions) were things like an Oriental name being written differently in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, old Japanese, old Chinese or wrongly (Rui Naiwei's name is almost always written wrongly). Whenever he met a name that was new to him, he didn't know if it was a new player or just a spelling he hadn't seen. Often he assumed a new player and made an entry accordingly in the database, only to have to unravel it later once he discovered it was an old player. It's easy to imagine the huge amount of work this takes, and why he eventually grew sick of it.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of a numbering system, and everything to do with a lack of language specific knowledge on the part of Ales. Had Ales chosen to use names instead of numbers, the same issue would have cropped up just as often, and with exactly the same outcome.

Everyone and their mother is using numbering systems everywhere. SSNs, bank accounts, license plates, house numbers, zip/postal codes, phone numbers, etc, etc, etc. There is a good reason for that. It is efficient and prevents errors.

As a database designer and administrator, I cringe when people criticise numbering systems without a good understanding of their purpose in maintaining high quality data.

[hyperpape]

Of course a database's numerical system need not be anything you use in everyday speech, you might not synchronize it between different databases, both of which seemed to be presumed by Joaz's comment.

American politicians all have unique social security numbers, but we still refer to them by their confusing and non-unique names like Reince Priebus and Barack Obama.

[Andrea]

I've had this problem a lot. My name is unfamiliar to lots of people in southern England - shouldn't be but it is.

In my observation, a lot of people just don't listen. It's not that they are deaf, but that they don't listen actively. I have an unusual surname which nobody ever gets right, so I always spell out the six letters. It is not uncommon for me to have to spell it several times while listeners stare in confusion at the paper/computer screen in front of them. I find that this is far less of a problem when I visit non-English-speaking countries, because the listeners expect my name to be foreign and odd, and so actually do listen.

As for your name, John, I guess nobody reads Robbie Burns any more.