From: Ealdwulf Wuffinga <ealdwulf@googlemail.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:00:53 GMT
Subject: Re: Generalised bisection
Message-ID: <efe2b6d70903130300q4ea2aa99q7e956d3bcbcfec4c@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <d9c1caea0903121102y5452603fua0e7a1b82e121b01@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Steven Tweed <orthochronous@gmail.com> wrote:

> I haven't even looked at the source code so a description of the
> mathematical algorithm would help, but I'll just point out that
> underflow (in the case of working with probabilities) and overflow
> (when working with their negated logarithms) is inherent in most
> multi-step Bayesian algorithms. The only solution is to rescale things
> as you go so that things stay in a "computable" range. (You're almost
> never interested in absolute probabilities anyway but rather relative
> probabilities or, in extreme cases, just the biggest probability, so
> rescaling isn't losing any useful information.)

Hmm, I'll have to think about that one.

Ealdwulf