From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <47D049CF.5080305@telus.net> Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 11:45:19 -0800 From: Paul Lalonde User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Windows/20080213) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: weigelt@metux.de, Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] thoughs about venti+fossil References: <20080305055255.GA4575@nibiru.local> <7f575fa27b41329b9ae24f40e6e5a3cd@plan9.bell-labs.com> <20080306040441.GA18329@nibiru.local> <14ec7b180803052015k6957e809p7c58dfa03545e026@mail.gmail.com> <775b8d190803052031m36e2c44ap319073cb857de8bd@mail.gmail.com> <20080306061637.GC18329@nibiru.local> In-Reply-To: <20080306061637.GC18329@nibiru.local> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7177db14-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 You don't have to care about the chance of a collision. Work out the expected value of the collision by estimating the maximum that might cost you. I'll go nuts, and claim that a collision will cost *one BILLION* dollars. Not checking for a collision, assuming a 2**-90 collision rate (which is a huge over-estimate, but that I've seen bandied about here), you wind up with an expected dollar cost of 2**-60 dollars on that collision. I don't pick up pennies in the street. I certainly won't dedicate any more brainpower to this silliness. Paul Enrico Weigelt wrote: > * Bruce Ellis wrote: > >> it's even sillier, if everyone bought 1,000,000 times as many tickets >> guess how that would change the probabilities. not at all! >> > > The main problem is: statistics is not reliable. You just can > guess how many times approx. something will happen if you take > a really large number of tries. You can never be sure for a > single case. > > > cu >