Meaning of "modulo the fact"


I came across this sentence in the American Heritage Dictionary, but still do not understand it.



This proposal is the best so far, modulo the fact that parts of it need modification.



The definition of modulo provided is correcting or adjusting for something, as by leaving something out of account.


Please elaborate on the meaning of modulo the fact. Does it mean the same as the following?



This proposal is the best so far, but note what parts of it still need to be modified.




Answer



The pattern



X modulo Y



is an informal but common parlance in technical, especially mathematically, oriented talk. It is used to mean informally 'X, ignoring Y'. For example,



"The rocket design was flawless, modulo the toxic waste produced by its fuel."



The meaning is inspired by, but not perfectly corresponding to, the arithmetic modulo function (for example, clock-time addition) which when suitably abstracted involves 'collapsing' all items of a set into the special items of the set, so that the full set does not need to be dealt with (this is where the associated meaning of 'ignoring' comes from).


In your interpretation "note what parts of it still need to be modified", the 'modified' part is irrelevant. 'Modulo' is pragmatically "I'm telling you about the most important part (the X), but remarking on the existence of some part that might be important for other reasons but under the current context we want to ignore (the Y)".


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