{"id":64118,"date":"2024-05-20T14:55:47","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T19:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=64118"},"modified":"2024-05-23T17:07:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T22:07:47","slug":"bloom-filters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=64118","title":{"rendered":"Bloom filters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today's <a href=\"https:\/\/xkcd.com\/2934\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">xkcd<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/bloom_filter_2x.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>According to Wikipedia,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">A Bloom filter is a space-efficient probabilistic data structure, conceived by Burton Howard Bloom in 1970, that is used to test whether an element is a member of a set. False positive matches are possible, but false negatives are not \u2013 in other words, a query returns either \"possibly in set\" or \"definitely not in set\". [&#8230;]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is an all-too-common situation in forensic applications, though the reason has nothing to do with the Bloom filter hash-function method. To take a simple example, suppose that a video recording shows that someone is 6'1\", give or take an inch.\u00a0 If a suspect is is 6'1\", they're \"possibly in set\" &#8212; though it's not strong evidence of guilt, since there are lots of people that size. But if they're 5'4\", then they're \"definitely not in set\", at least if the measurements are accurate.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, a more complicated version of the same thing applies to forensic speaker identification.<\/p>\n<p>The \"beyond a reasonable doubt\" standard of proof adds an additional asymmetry in criminal cases.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today's xkcd: According to Wikipedia, A Bloom filter is a space-efficient probabilistic data structure, conceived by Burton Howard Bloom in 1970, that is used to test whether an element is a member of a set. False positive matches are possible, but false negatives are not \u2013 in other words, a query returns either \"possibly in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linguistics-in-the-funny-papers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64118"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64188,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64118\/revisions\/64188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}