VeryAnts - probabilistic integer arithmetic for Ruby

VeryAnts is a library for replacing regular (i.e. deterministic) arithmetic operations with equivalent (on average) probabilistic variants. This is done by supplying a variance constant, which determines a range of possible results for each operation. For instance, given a constant c, arithmetic x + y is defined as:

sum := x, chance := 1 / c

(c * y) times do
  r := [new random number between 0 and 1]

  if r < chance
     sum := sum + 1

return sum

So for c = 3, x = 5, y = 2, you start with x, and have a 1/3 chance of adding 1 to it six different times. On average, this would occur twice, which would give you 7, the correct answer. Another nice property is that for c = 1, addition works completely normally.

All of the other arithmetic operators (-, *, /, %) have the same two properties, namely that they give the correct result on average, and they always give the correct result when c = 1. Additionally, they also have the less-easy-to-define property that a higher c roughly correlates to higher variance.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'very_ants'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install very_ants

1. Require the gem

require "very_ants"

2. Set the variance constant

Integer::how_antsy_do_you_feel(4)

3. Try and (mostly) fail to get correct arithmetic results

5 + 7 == 12  # probably not, but who knows

Warning: weird things can occur if you're running this in a REPL. For instance, when using pry, the arithmetic done internally by the interpreter seems to be affected, so sometimes the line numbers will get screwed up or the interpreter will crash.

You wouldn't.

I came up with the idea as a joke when talking to my roommate, and I thought it would be funny.

Is efficiency really the reason you think this is a bad idea?

It's a pun on the word "variance"; "vari-ance" sounds like "very ants". Also, it behaves really weirdly, or put another way, "very antsy".

Worth it.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.