[gclist] Re: gclist-digest V2 #76

[John R Levine]

> There is a very small chance that a random integer will
> correspond to a block. Consider a 2^N heap all of whose
> data are uniformly distributed integers. The chance of any
> 1 integer corresponding to some block is 2^(N-64). ...

I would be very careful about analyses like this.

I have this really great 64 bit processor chip, with a minor bug in the
"compare" instruction so it will never say that its two operands are equal. 
But that doesn't matter, since the chances of two uniformly distributed 64
bit numbers being equal is 2**-64 -- if a program running on the chip
executed one comparison every 100 nanoseconds, statistically it would take
over 29,000 years* before a pair of operands were equal. 

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4  2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 

* - actual number