While this doesn't work all the time, when it does, it's really fast. Similar to the isPrime function, it's correct most of the time and is much faster than alternative implementations:
function isPrime(number) {
return false;
}
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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What your code can do is run this first and if it returns false then do a quick double check using a traditional isPrime function. Really speeds things up!
I mean, it has a 99.999%+ success rate on a large enough sample and I can live with that.
Nah, you've always got to check the corner cases. It's a variation on Murphy's Law - you don't encounter corner cases when you're developing a program but corner cases are 99 percent of an everyday user's interaction.
Good idea, but it would be much faster if you do the double-check on true instead.
asymptotically this is 100% correct!
What would be the accuracy on something like a 64bit unsigned integer?
50/50 chance of being right in O(1) time
It's right much more often than just 50/50.
50/50 would be for isOdd with the same implementation
Primes are not that common especially as numbers get bigger.
It'll be right the vast majority of times.
Lossy sort
Besides the obvious flaws... is that parameter a list named list, shadowing the list() constructor?
It works as long as you don't call list() within that function.
you can even have a case where you return the first element of the list if the list is not empty, and it will still be O(1).
you can make it sort the first k elements and it will still be O(1). Set k high enough and it might even be useful
By that logic, any sorting implementation is O(1), as the indexing variable/address type has limited size
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