From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <775b8d190803061218vf1dbd7esbd96e55cb8f0c5aa@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 07:18:07 +1100 From: "Bruce Ellis" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] thoughs about venti+fossil In-Reply-To: <47D049CF.5080305@telus.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline 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> <47D049CF.5080305@telus.net> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 71c7be54-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 If you stopped to pick up the penny you'd get hit by lightning and fail to cash in your lottery ticket while getting bitten by a moose! brucee On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 6:45 AM, Paul Lalonde wrote: > 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 > > > >