3 ms·

Thanks, this is perfect. (I wonder if you should add this to the Wikipedia article? It would make it a lot clearer.) I can definitely see how it works now.

• RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  It's really, really bad code, and although it serves its purpose of being explicit, I wouldn't put it on WikiPedia. By the way, if you really want to learn about learning, I strongly recommend that you return to the description in the wikipedia article and read it again, this time with your greater understanding. Ask youself: Why didn't I understand this first time round, and what should I have done differently to make sure I did? It's only by such self-reflection like that you will improve your independent learning abilities. Here's the section in question: An empty Bloom filter is a bit array of m bits, all set to 0. There must also be k different hash functions defined, each of which maps or hashes some set element to one of the m array positions with a uniform random distribution. To add an element, feed it to each of the k hash functions to get k array positions. Set the bits at all these positions to 1. To query for an element (test whether it is in the set), feed it to each of the k hash functions to get k array positions. If any of the bits at these positions are 0, the element is not in the set - if it were, then all the bits would have been set to 1 when it was inserted. If all are 1, then either the element is in the set, or the bits have been set to 1 during the insertion of other elements. That descriptions seems to me to be complete and clear. What did you not understand?