From: Jacob Fugal <lukfugl@...>
Date: 2005-07-16T07:12:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Sampling (#39)

On 7/15/05, Ara.T.Howard <Ara.T.Howard@noaa.gov> wrote:
> this means your __average__ line size is 9.  that means your average number
> has 8 digits (ignoring newline).  a uniform sampling should have an average
> line size of about 5 digits (6 chars counting newline).  seems like a heavy
> bias towards the top.  do other runs yield similar file sizes or is this
> merely chance?

Not necessarily. Consider, numbers from 100_000_000 up have 9
characters. Those number comprise 90% of the population space. Numbers
from 10_000_000 to 99_999_999 have 8 digits. These number comprise 90%
of the remaining space, or 9% of the total population space. Numbers
under 10_000_000 comprise only 1% of the population space. Obviously,
you're going to have many, many more 8 and 9 digit numbers than 7
digits or under. It doesn't surprise me at all that the average line
length is *at least* 9 characters (with the new line). I'd expect the
full floating point average to be closer to 10 characters.

And, indeed: 49444444 / 5000000 = 9.8888888

Jacob Fugal