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Procrustes

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In Greek mythology, '''Procrustes''' ("'''the stretcher'''"), also known as '''Damastes''' ("'''subduer'''") and '''Polypemon''' ("'''harming much'''"), was a bandit from Attica, Greece Attica. He had his stronghold in the hills outside Eleusis. Here he had an iron bed into which he invited every passerby to lie down. If the guest proved too tall, he would amputate the excess length; if the victim was found too short, he was then stretched out on the rack (torture) rack until he fit. Nobody would ever fit in the bed, because it was secretly adjustable : Procrustes would stretch or shrink it upon sizing his victims from afar. Such cunning ruses were common practice in mythology... He continued this reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, who tied Procrustes to his own bed and cut off his head and feet. (Since Theseus was a stout fellow, for him the bed had been set on the short position.) Killing Procrustes was the last adventure of Theseus on his journey from Troezen to Athens.

Derived meanings
A '''Procrustean bed''' is an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. '''Procrustes analysis''' is the name for the process of performing a shape preserving Euclidean transformation to a set of shapes. This removes variations in translation, rotation and scaling across the dataset, so to move them into a common frame of reference. This is generally the precursor to further statistical analysis. A '''Procrustean string''' in computer science is a fixed length String (computer science) string into which can be placed strings of varying lengths. If the string inserted is too short, then it is padded out, usually with Space character spaces or null characters. If the string inserted is too long, it is truncation truncated. This term was made somewhat popular by its use and explanation in the Sinclair Research Sinclair Sinclair ZX81 ZX81 user manual. Although the term did not catch on in wider usage, it appears in some references, notably FOLDOC. Category:Metaphors de:Prokrustes fr:Procuste it:Procuste no:Prokrustesseng sv:Prokrustes