• greenhorn@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    Ah, obvious now, thank you. For some reason my his brain couldn’t get to actually turning off half the breakers in one go

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      10 days ago

      Binary search requires splitting the search space into two halves, then asking “is it in that half?”

      Normally the “is it in that half?” check involves a numerical comparison: test value versus target value. “higher or lower” here gets you to “is it in that half?”

      So finding the midpoint seems like a core part of the process, but really that’s just a shortcut in the case of comparable values, that helps you split into two and check membership.

      I admit I couldn’t think of that either: just alter half the items and check for effect.