Article View: comp.theory
Article #2073Re: Modulus (Re: hashing function for strings)
From: Dave Jones
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1990 00:23
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1990 00:23
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From article <Er$cfg@cs.psu.edu>, by flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee): > Dave Jones <djones@megatest.UUCP> wrote: >>I differ. The first of these, -5 div 3 == -1 is wrong. > > The contrary view is that abs(a/b) != abs(-a/b) is strange. It > depends on what you're doing. I have no problems with either stance. You've hit the nail on the head. The contrary 'view' is only that: a view. Many beautiful and consistent mathematical concepts seem 'strange' when understood only incompletely. If you didn't sell it back to the bookstore for tuition, get your old group-theory textbook out of the garage and read the first couple of chapters. Then tell me what 'abs' has to do with the price of tea in China. Several others have told me that it 'depends on what you're doing', but so far nobody has come up with an example where the contrary view is a win.
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arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!megatest!djonesReferences:
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!megatest!djones From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) Newsgroups: comp.theory,comp.misc,comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Modulus (Re: hashing function for strings) Message-ID: <12099@goofy.megatest.UUCP> Date: 22 Feb 90 00:23:35 GMT References: <Er$cfg@cs.psu.edu> Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca Lines: 18