A disposable plate or tray includes a substantially planar bottom portion, a sidewall and a flange. In one embodiment, the method for creating a state machine for probability estimation comprises assigning probabilities to states of a look up table, including setting a probability for each state i of the states equal to the highest probability of the LPS multiplied by the adaptation rate to the power i, where i is a number for a given state and the adaptation rate is smaller than 1. The memory controller receives a plurality of write data values from a host and outputs the write data values as respective serial streams of bits. The elongate ring further includes an aperture extending from the first edge to the second edge and defined by the interior wall of the elongate ring.