4 ms·
I don't get it. I thought a kilobyte is only 2^13?
by _fn 4y ago
I don't get it. I thought a kilobyte is only 2^13?
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- bigDinosaur 4y agoThat's 8192 bits, with which you can represent numbers moderately higher than 2^13.
- mbrubeck 4y agoA byte is 8 bits long (2^3), so there are 256 distinct values you can store in a byte (2^(2^3) = 2^8 = 256). A kilobyte is 8192 bits long (2^13), so there are 2^8192 distinct values you can store in a kilobyte.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoWith 98% accuracy, a Hyperloglog can count ~4Bn distinct 64-bit integers in ~1.5Kb. Without a data structure, this would take GigaBytes (1M times the space). That's pretty incredible to me. Do the combinatorics of every possible combination of 4B distinct 64-bit integers that that 1.5kb can represent. Mind blowing.
- pca006132 4y agoI think what really fastinates me is how much better we can solve a problem if we allows some approximation/uncertainty.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoIf I did the calculations correctly, that's over 20 Exabytes worth of data that ~1.5kb could represent with ~98% accuracy. 20 Exabytes is probably close to all the information stored in Google...
- ralusek 4y agoA kilobyte is ~2^13 bits, but each bit is a power of 2 in regards to "things you can do." So it's more like 2^2^13. Technically a kilobyte is 1000 bytes exactly, so I'm not sure why the title says 2^1024 rather than 2^8000, which is the actual number of states in a kilobyte.
- fumeux_fume 4y agoLol, I was wondering how long I'd have to scroll to find an accurate definition of kilobyte.