this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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o(1) statistical prime approximation (infosec.pub)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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https://cosocial.ca/@mhoye/116111505546606451

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[–] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I'm struggling to follow the code here. I'm guessing it's C++ (which I'm very unfamiliar with)

bool is_prime(int x) {
    return false;
}

Wouldn't this just always return false regardless of x (which I presume is half the joke)? Why is it that when it's tested up to 99999, it has a roughly 95% success rate then?

[–] kraftpudding@lemmy.world 32 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I suppose because about 5% of numbers are actually prime numbers, so false is not the output an algorithm checking for prime numbers should return

[–] JustARegularNerd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh I'm with you, the tests are precalculated and expect a true to return on something like 99991, this function as expected returns false, which throws the test into a fail.

Thank you for that explanation

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

And the natural distribution of primes gets smaller as integer length increases

[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 28 points 5 days ago

That's the joke. Stochastic means probabilistic. And this "algorithm" gives the correct answer for the vast majority of inputs

[–] Hexarei@beehaw.org 4 points 5 days ago

Because only 5% of those numbers are prime