ICardinality other = HyperLogLogPlus.Builder.build(buffer);
// if hll estimator hasn't been allocated yet, just set it equal to the partial
if (hll == null) {
LOG.debug("hll is null; other.sizeof = " + other.sizeof());
hll = other;
precision = (int) Math.ceil(Math.log(other.sizeof())/Math.log(2.0));
LOG.debug("precision set to: " + precision);
} else {
hll.merge(other);