At 23:49 24/11/2017, you wrote:
On 11/24/17 5:26 PM, Jean-Christophe Deschamps wrote:
At 22:38 24/11/2017, you wrote:
One proof of the falsehood of your assertion is that we CAN fill a
database with some data using UIDs, and we will almost certainly not
get a collision, while you assertion we will.
This is an attempt at "proof by example". Keith is perfectly right
--mathematically speaking-- and your "proof" doesn't hold water, I
mean as a formal proof. The best proof that your "proof" isn't a
proof is that you feel obliged to add "almost certainly".
DISproof by example is a perfectly valid method. If someone makes a
claim that something is ALWAYS true, ONE counter example IS a
disproof. I said almost certainly as the chance of a collision isn't 0
(to be able to say with certainty) but is most defintely less than the
100% claimed.
You're confusing one mathematical theorem and one practical statement.
The first is the _mathematical_ fact that any PRNG (using any fixed
number of random bits, which is what xUIDs are) will provide an
infinite number of collisions with probability 1. This is definitely
true. Of course here, the number of samples is implicitely infinite.
Your practical statement is that you can "most certainly" ignore the
possibility of collision when feeding 2^N xUIDs into a unique column
without loosing sleep. That's good enough in practice. The issue with
your "demonstration" is that 2^N is bounded, whatever finite N you
choose. Hence you don't contradict what Keith said, you just say
something different applying to restricted cases. You're speaking about
practice, while Keith told about math. You're both right, each from his
own point of view. But you can't claim to disproof a trivially true
theorem this way, by changing its premices.
An event with probability 10^-100000...000 (any finite number of
zeroes) will occur at least once, provided you run enough tries. It'll
occur an infinite number of times if you run an infinite number of
tries. Else its probability would be zero.
Your "disproof" amounts to say that 10^-100000...000 = 0
And neither Keith nor I ever said that an xUID collision will occur
with probability 1 after 2^64 samples. That would be false and that's
why people feel free to use xUIDs _AND_ sleep quietly.
JcD
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