From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751713AbWGZRTU (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:19:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751717AbWGZRTU (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:19:20 -0400 Received: from host36-195-149-62.serverdedicati.aruba.it ([62.149.195.36]:33684 "EHLO mx.cpushare.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751711AbWGZRTT (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Jul 2006 13:19:19 -0400 Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:20:29 +0200 From: andrea@cpushare.com To: "J. Bruce Fields" Cc: Adrian Bunk , Hans Reiser , Nikita Danilov , Rene Rebe , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: the " 'official' point of view" expressed by kernelnewbies.org regarding reiser4 inclusion Message-ID: <20060726172029.GS32243@opteron.random> References: <17604.31639.213450.987415@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20060725123558.GA32243@opteron.random> <44C65931.6030207@namesys.com> <20060726124557.GB23701@stusta.de> <20060726132957.GH32243@opteron.random> <20060726134326.GD23701@stusta.de> <20060726142854.GM32243@opteron.random> <20060726145019.GF23701@stusta.de> <20060726160604.GO32243@opteron.random> <20060726170236.GD31172@fieldses.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060726170236.GD31172@fieldses.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 01:02:36PM -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote: > On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 06:06:04PM +0200, andrea@cpushare.com wrote: > > JFYI: all statistics only take a sample of the larger space, the whole > > point of having a statistic is because you can't measure the total. > > The smaller the sample compared to the total, the less the stats are > > accurate > > Definitely not true in general. If I wanted to know the gender ratio at > the latest OLS I'd take the results from a sample of a dozen chosen > randomly over the results from a sample of hundreds all taken from the > men's room. Well, your example is perhaps the worst one since you wouldn't be decreasing the quality of your stats very much by only doing the sample in the men's room ;). I guess you meant the woman's room. > For exactly the same quality of sampling, yes, the larger the better, > but the point of diminishing returns comes pretty quickly. So given > limited resources it's probably more important to work on the quality of > the sample rather than on its size.... No matter how you see it, the larger the better (in the worst case it won't make a difference). Certainly if I could work on the quality, that would be more important than adding 1 more user. But I can't work on the quality.