Comments on: The XKCD book page numbering explained (or skew binary explained)

By: Witek

Witek — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:07:50 +0000

It is useless? It is uber usefull! Using sparse skew binary numbering system, allows to implement random access list in functional language with O(1) head, O(1) tail retrivial, and O(log n) any element lookup. It is better both than balanced binary tree, and than normal list!

By: The reviews are in, xkcd: volume 0 is a winner | the breadpig blog

The reviews are in, xkcd: volume 0 is a winner | the breadpig blog — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:16:49 +0000

[...] here’s a bonus review from Barklund.org, who explained the unique page-numbering system. var disqus_url = [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:25:43 +0000

You might be interested in this clock applet I wrote.
http://blog.garritys.org/2009/12/rosetta-clock.html
It does skew binary as well as some others.

By: MM

MM — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:59:33 +0000

WTF? shit hvor er det sort…. :))

By: Barklund

Barklund — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:04:00 +0000

I think I updated the article with a reference to skew binary just a few seconds before your comment ticked in. Yes, it is an existing number system with the (sole) interesting property, that increment and decrement is very simple to implement (that sounds almost poetic).

But that does not IMO justify using it for anything other than slides for a CS lecture :)

By: davean

davean — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:51:43 +0000

Actually, it is called Skew Binary and it does have some useful properties for computer science: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2004/IntroFuncProg/lecture08.html

I take it you incremented what page you were on a lot?