Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ben Bacarisse Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Another little puzzle Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 14:04:16 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 41 Message-ID: <87o7rlhtsv.fsf@bsb.me.uk> References: <87tu1diu2s.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <864jtdtkt5.fsf@linuxsc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: reader01.eternal-september.org; posting-host="57624f30fcef1e553e955bc95eb47a53"; logging-data="722001"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX180d8+FszCjrlMO1AvdBjzDq1Rf9JVFvM0=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:RBU0dG3oa9Ck+k3ToOFk88yWj0Y= sha1:cL4IGpn02xUO8X8yPQwzyYjxoF0= X-BSB-Auth: 1.999d7858e98969b569bc.20221230140416GMT.87o7rlhtsv.fsf@bsb.me.uk Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:16194 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. Anyway, the credit I'm giving is for your considering this a reasonable thing to try calculate for arc lengths, rather than the vector average that minimises a different measure altogether. Maybe MT also suggested that as an alternative but I only remember his championing the vector interpretation. My apologies to MT if he did that as well. -- Ben.