> When a new article is inserted, there is a higher probability it will be inserted in a large gap than a small gap, so it should balance out.
That’s a good point and I’m not entirely sure why it (appears to) not work that way. Maybe it’s because that interval has a higher likelihood, but there is no preference for numbers towards the middle, that would dissect it into (roughly) equal parts?
I think it is working. The worst case was 50x less likely than the average. That sounds like a lot when stated like that, but its really not when taken in the context of ~6.5 million articles.
More interesting question would be what is the standard deviation (of gap size), not what is the worst outlier
That’s a good point and I’m not entirely sure why it (appears to) not work that way. Maybe it’s because that interval has a higher likelihood, but there is no preference for numbers towards the middle, that would dissect it into (roughly) equal parts?