Comment Comment by yummyfajitas The explanation I gave to my mom:We want to count all the books in the library. You count up shelf #1, I count up shelf #2. That's map. The more people we get, the faster it goes.Now we get together and add our individual counts. That's reduce.[edit: created a blog post containing this explanation. Maybe it will be useful after this HN conversation vanishes. http://crazybear.posterous.com/mapreduce-explained-in-41-wor... ] parent yummyfajitas 15 years ago
We want to count all the books in the library. You count up shelf #1, I count up shelf #2. That's map. The more people we get, the faster it goes.
Now we get together and add our individual counts. That's reduce.
[edit: created a blog post containing this explanation. Maybe it will be useful after this HN conversation vanishes. http://crazybear.posterous.com/mapreduce-explained-in-41-wor... ]