this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
260 points (98.5% liked)

xkcd

8446 readers
339 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

https://xkcd.com/2934

Alt text:

Sometimes, you can tell Bloom filters are the wrong tool for the job, but when they're the right one you can never be sure.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's a recent algorithm using somewhat similar ideas for approximate counting of unique objects in a stream with constant memory:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-invent-an-efficient-new-way-to-count-20240516/

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I think I like hash-based probabilistic counting better, but this is interesting