Binary chop with uncertain test

Suppose I have a sequence of N stages, one of which is anomalous, and I can test one of the stages which tells me if the anomalous stage is before or after that stage. The natural way to isolate the anomalous stage is a binary chop: to test the middle stage, finding out which half is anomalous, and then divide that half into two, etc.

However, if my test is only p=90% accurate, is any other method better? My instinct says "do the same thing, but repeat the test until you're effectively certain". But I always wonder if something else works better.

I'm thinking of debugging. To a mathematician, debugging (or any scientific method) is a MASSIVELY COMPLICATED binary chop. But I always feel like I'm getting the level of certainty wrong. Either I'm not 100% certain I'm testing the right thing and need to go over, or I'm wasting too much time when the problem would have become apparent if I ploughed ahead even if I wasn't sure my test was accurate.

Crossposting

So, I post to dreamwidth, which crossposts to livejournal, which crossposts to twitter, which crossposts to facebook.

This seems completely ridiculous, but I honestly think there's no better way of doing it?

Macroblogging posts need to go to DW (because it's non-evil) and LJ (because lots of people are only on LJ) and Facebook (because even more people are only on facebook). And might as well go on twitter, because if you read my random real-time mutterings, you might as well see my longer comments too.

Microblogging posts go to twitter (because that's what it's for) and Facebook (because facebook tries to do both macro- and micro-).

Dreamwidth can only post to LJ. LJ can post to Twitter and FB. Twitter can post to facebook. FB may be able to x-post, but I don't want to rely on it. But since twitter posts to FB, I don't want LJ to post to FB too or everything from DW/LJ would be double posted. Hence the four-site chain.

Occasional f-locked posts go to DW and LJ only, because I trust them to keep them f-locked by default, rather than at the whim of the next security update.

Is there any client that manages this for you?

I think I asked this before, but it seems a fb-killer wouldn't so much be another _site_ but an interface that reduces FB from king to commodity.

Gym one year retrospective

( Read more... )