Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Another little puzzle Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 06:20:03 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 49 Message-ID: <86cz7zslik.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <87tu1diu2s.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <864jtdtkt5.fsf@linuxsc.com> <87o7rlhtsv.fsf@bsb.me.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader01.eternal-september.org; posting-host="cfee4b9e7610411319936648d49eddfd"; logging-data="1094453"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19gio5FjPkSFWcDz3631TWAMfG2/UdZO6M=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:zBEsQqkLS0EBlEPgzJfypi7gKDU= sha1:LP58RB9Rh8tC/AlAjf/UUb0xang= Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:16197 Ben Bacarisse writes: > Tim Rentsch writes: > >> Ben Bacarisse writes: >> >> [...] >> >>> I found this problem interesting but only later in the discussion as >>> I have been using this metric for some time. What got interesting >>> (to me) was that there is another sound interpretation of the >>> average as suggested by Tim, [...] >> >> It wasn't my idea. I got it from a posting by Mike Terry on >> December 21. I hadn't seen that formulation of arithmetic mean >> before and I was amazed that it worked. So I can't really take >> any credit for the suggestion. >> >>> ironically prompted but a general definition of what might >>> constitute an average that I had posted and failed to follow >>> through on. >> >> I remember your posting as coming after the one by Mike Terry, >> and so I thought your comments were derived from his. Sorry if >> my conclusions there were off the mark. > > You are right in that MT posted the same general formulation 9 hours > before I did (though I'd not seen that). My confusion came from your > explanation, to me, of "conventional average": > > "Sorry, I meant to refer to your formulation of average" > > followed by the formula I gave rather than then entirely equivalent > one given by MT. Ahh, that makes sense. My comment muddied the waters; I was thinking of your formula and the MT formula as the same, and rather inadvertently said "your formulation" (after all, I was responding to and had quoted your formula) without mentioning that I had also read MT's post before responding. > Anyway, the credit I'm giving is for your considering this a > reasonable thing to try calculate for arc lengths, rather than > [...] Thank you for that. And in that respect I think I can modestly say that some credit is deserved (especially considering the amount of effort it took to code something up that calculated this measure).