R. David Murray added the comment: Unfortunately that wouldn't be correct English, as far as I know. How about "This isn't defined other than that..." I think that reads a bit more clearly than "beyond that" even to a native speaker, even though beyond is valid in this context. ---------- nosy: +r.david.murray _______________________________________ Python tracker http://bugs.python.org/issue8686 _______________________________________

A.M. Kuchling added the comment: How about just dropping those words entirely, and writing "Return an approximate upper bound on ratio() very quickly. This is not as accurate as ratio(), but is faster to compute." (We'd make similar changes to real_quick_ratio()'s text.) ---------- nosy: +akuchling _______________________________________ Python tracker http://bugs.python.org/issue8686 _______________________________________

Tim Peters added the comment: I find this whole discussion to be hilarious ;-) "Approximate upper bound" is gibberish - "upper bound" is a crisp concept that means what it says. It's not necessarily true that an upper bound is inaccurate - it may be exactly right. So "this is not as accurate as ratio()" overstates the case. "quick_ratio() returns an upper bound on what ratio() returns" is the truth, and can't be improved by adding more words. Appealing to a "correct" result would also be misleading (what ratio() returns is a more-or-less arbitrary computation whose only claim to "correctness" is that ratio() returns what it's documented to return). If people find the gloss in the docs confusing, remove the gloss entirely, leaving just the correct: "Return an upper bound on ratio() relatively quickly." ---------- nosy: +tim_one _______________________________________ Python tracker http://bugs.python.org/issue8686 _______________________________________

Tim Peters added the comment: Terry asks:

is it also guaranteed that quick_ratio() <= real_quick_ratio()

Nope! The docs don't say that, so it's not guaranteed. It's not the _intent_ of the code that it be true, either. The only point to quick_ratio() and real_quick_ratio() is speed. ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker http://bugs.python.org/issue8686 _______________________________________