[GhotiFish]

I always loved bloom filters, because to me, they showed something that was very fundamentally important.

That the amount of information required so that you can say whether an element is in a set or not is significantly less that the set itself.

That is just wierd, but amazing.

If someone asks me about weird and wonderful things in computer science, this is what I talk about.

[MichaelGG]

Well it doesn't tell you the element's membership. It only can tell you it might be in, or definitely isn't.

Like reviewing a passenger list where everyone's name is abbreviated to initials.