From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/2884 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Michael Shulman Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: distributors Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:31:13 -0600 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241018962 6213 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:29:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:29:22 +0000 (UTC) To: categories Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Sat Nov 19 09:06:37 2005 -0400 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:06:37 -0400 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EdSOF-0004X1-AV for categories-list@mta.ca; Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:04:23 -0400 In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 29 Original-Lines: 20 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:2884 Archived-At: Thanks to everyone who replied to my email. The consensus from people who claim to know (although there were some plausible guesses) is that the name is by analogy with "distributions" from functional analysis, which are "generalized functions." Thus changing "ion" to "or" we get that "distributors" are "generalized functors." On 11/16/05, Michael Shulman wrote: > Hi, > > Can anyone tell me the motivation for the use of the term > "distributors" as a synonym for profunctors/bimodules? Is there > something being distributed? > > Thanks, > Mike > > >