Probabilistic search - psearch.tar.gz

[BCS]

sundaresh wrote:
> FYI, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that statement. It is
> certainly not a bug, if there is one, and I am not ruling out that
> possibility.comparisons is never decremented or decreased, so how can it be
> reduced to the value of 9, if it increases above 9, as you claim/assume
> that it supposedly does. The value of comparisons is set prior to any/all
> recursive calls to psearch. If on the other hand, you claim that it is 
> possibly the characteristic of the random number generator, since it makes
> the decision of which half to search for first, but then again, that decision
> is binary and I think that any random number generator should generate as
> many even numbers as odd numbers, at least for a reasonably sized sample.
> 
> I am not one to contest theory, and if this algorithm is correct, then
> there probably is a very valid and sound theoretical explanation as to
> why it works, but I am not one to reject evidence either, in the face of it,
> especially of such an astounding nature. It is well acknowledged that
> empirical testing of methods lead to a convincing degree of assurance in them
> and is a reasonable way to assess their reliability.
> 
> My apologies if I have irked you. 
> 
> To have an open mind, while looking at it is all I asked for.
> 
> The reason I posted it here was because I was not sure myself.
> 
I haven't looked at the code because I don't have a .tar.gz loaded so...

How about try a different dataset? Grab chunks out of "Alice in wonderland" or 
something like that. I have heard of cases where it was possible to get more 
performance than you should be able to by leveraging predictable non randomness 
in a data set.
	An example: in English the letter "Q" is almost always followed by "U" their 
for if you are searching for "U" and you find a "Q" check the next char.