Comment by marcosdumay
4 years ago
> I don't retain arbitrary facts.
I still fail to understand what is arbitrary in scientific notation. The designers almost certainly didn't think in terms of windows when creating the data types, they probably thought about the mantissa and exponent the way it's usually explained, and maybe about information density (entropy per bit) when comparing with other possibilities.
Anyway, if it helps, great. Different explanations are always welcome. But this one is post-fact.
> I still fail to understand what is arbitrary in scientific notation
I used the word arbitrary, but did not say that scientific notation was arbitrary.
I will try to explain another way. The equation is an assertion. For me, it does not plainly follow from the underlying problem. Once the author has introduced the windowing approach, the equation follows easily for me.
> almost certainly [..] they probably [..] Different explanations are always welcome. But this one is post-fact.
By your own words, it is not clear that it is. It is clear that you doubt that the author of the system was thinking in terms of windows and buckets.