Re: Optimizer improvements: to do or not to do?

Ron Mayer wrote:
> Gregory Stark wrote:
>   
>> Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com> writes:
>>     
>>> ...vastly overestimate the number of pages .. because postgresql's guess 
>>> at the correlation being practically 0 despite the fact that the distinct 
>>> values for any given column are closely packed on a few pages.
>>>       
>> I think we need a serious statistics jock to pipe up with some standard
>> metrics that do what we need. Otherwise we'll never have a solid footing for
>> the predictions we make and will never know how much we can trust them.
>>     
>
> Do we know if any such people participate/lurk on this list, or
> if the conversation should go elsewhere?
>   
I lurk... I don't  know if I'm a 'statistics jock', but I may be 
valuable if only I had a better understanding of how the optimizer 
works. I have been following this thread with interest, but could really 
do with a good pointer to background information beyond what I have read 
in the main postgres manual. Does such information exist,  and if so, 
where ?

Josh Reich