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0 pointssigmaml5y ago0 comments

Not the GP, but here is a scenario that I am interested in understanding from the perspective of types.

A calculation that involves 21 parameters (in a particular insurance industry underwriting) yields a number. A threshold is read from the database. This threshold could change every month.

Suppose that the current value of the threshold is 0.78. The calculation above can yield an `x` with the following cases: (i) x <= 0.78, (ii) x > 0.78.

We have hundreds of test cases for the combinations of the 21 parameters, leading to hundreds of values for `x`. It is a bug for `x` to be > 0.78 when it should be the other way.

Is there a way this can be encoded in types? That would be very interesting.

Thanks.

0 comments

yawaramin5y ago

This description doesn't quite make sense. If the threshold is regularly changing, the calculation can output the same result number for the same 21 parameters and have it be a bug or not a bug from month to month, depending on the threshold. How can you write a test for that without locking in the threshold? Indeed, without hard-coding the threshold in the calculation itself?

lmm5y ago

Sure. Create a type that represents x being <= that threshold, with a private constructor. Only allow constructing it via a factory method that requires it to be an x that should be <= the threshold. Then whenever you have a value of that type, you know that it's legitimately <= the threshold, and the bug becomes impossible.

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