From: H. Peter Anvin Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:05:07 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/3] automatically skip away from broken commits Message-ID: <4A309083.9090907@zytor.com> In-Reply-To: <4A308B5D.2010704@zytor.com> H. Peter Anvin wrote: > > 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. > Urk, I managed to get myself completely confused -- I did the series approximation on the wrong side of inverting the function. The correct power is actually 1.5 (over the range 0 to 1), a value > 1 is necessary to bias the PRNG toward the beginning (x = 0) of the list. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.