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A comment on A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually count pearls. Parent comment

Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by JackFr on Monday May 24, 2021 @08:57AM (#27263772)
There’s also a technique called “weighing”.

It’s a transformation which, by assuming the items are identical, turns quantity from a discrete value to a continuous one with some loss of precision. In many cases measurement times can be reduced my more than 99%.

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Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by matsemann on Monday May 24, 2021 @09:39AM (#27264216)
Cut the snark. And if you check the link, the assumption that items are identical is far off.
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Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by JackFr on Monday May 24, 2021 @10:15AM (#27264603)
Yeah I know. And the use cases of people on a beach, crowded theater, trees in the woods, etc. don't lend themselves to weighing.

Honestly didn't intend to come off as snarky, just clever and amusing. Tough to convey tone -- risk I take I guess. Oh well.

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Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by carlmr on Monday May 24, 2021 @12:33PM (#27266406)
I think you're not wrong. Even if the pearls aren't identical, if you weigh enough of them at once the central limit theorem will be on your side.
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Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by TchoBeer on Monday May 24, 2021 @01:12PM (#27266989)
Maybe I misunderstand, but I don't think you meant central limit theorem.
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Re:A Japanese company cut 80% of the time needed to manually... by carlmr on Monday May 24, 2021 @01:20PM (#27267093)
I did indeed. Your pearls might be heterogenous, but they will probably have an average weight that doesn't change much over time. The central limit theorem makes it possible to estimate quite accurately how much you have of a sum quantity including having a somewhat known accuracy of that estimate, since you get a nice normal distribution with known mean and variance.
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