7 ms·
That's an incredibly misleading way to phrase it. The counting algorithm is exact. Errors creep in during execution, resulting in an approximate result. An appr
by dataflow 4y ago
That's an incredibly misleading way to phrase it. The counting algorithm is exact. Errors creep in during execution, resulting in an approximate result. An approximation algorithm is a whole different beast, and that's the point of the discussion here.
- kqr 4y agoDoes really how the error comes into life matter more than the magnitude of the error?
- dataflow 4y agoIt's pretty easy to find out - go pitch some approximate vote counting algorithm (say, 50% random subsampling to get 2x speed? or whatever) to random people on the street, and ask them if they would care if the government decided the president that way.