From: H. Peter Anvin Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:43:09 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/3] automatically skip away from broken commits Message-ID: <4A308B5D.2010704@zytor.com> In-Reply-To: <200906110602.54861.chriscool@tuxfamily.org> Christian Couder wrote: > > I think my algorithm is better enough than a random one to be worth using by > default. Like HPA says it's in practice like a random one with a bias. > But it's a really poor such. Using an actual biased PRNG will give the best of both variants (a bias to prefer better commits, and still all commits reachable.) After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for way too long, it seems that a suitable bias function would be to take the fourth root of the PRNG value, i.e. raise it to the power 0.25. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.