←back to thread

Uncertain<T>

(nshipster.com)
444 points samtheprogram | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.267s | source
Show context
boscillator ◴[] No.45055418[source]
Does this handle covariance between different variables? For example, the location of the object your measuring your distance to presumably also has some error in it's position, which may be correlated with your position (if, for example, if it comes from another GPS operating at a similar time).

Certainly a univarient model in the type system could be useful, but it would be extra powerful (and more correct) if it could handle covariance.

replies(4): >>45056007 #>>45056398 #>>45060737 #>>45062423 #
1. joerick ◴[] No.45060737[source]
I've been wondering for a while if a program could "learn" covariance somehow. Through real-world usage.

Otherwise, it feels to me that it'd be consistently wrong to model the variables as independent. And any program of notable size is gonna be far too big to consider correlations between all the variables.

As for how one might do the learning, I don't know yet!