> -----Original Message----- > From: Steve Wampler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 7:54 AM > To: Group, Unicon > Subject: Re: [Unicon-group] Making the puzzle more interesting... > > > I attached a solution to the general case. ... > I can't call it "my" > solution because I've borrowed some ideas from code Steve > Hunter sent me (the most notable being the use of set > intersection to reject invalid pair couples like: X:Y & Y:Z > (same state name used twice) - I had been using a more > brute-force check.
I wonder what the optimal algorithm is? Right now, everyone's guessing and testing code. That's fine, but we don't yet know what's possible (in the k^n vs. n^2 vs. n log n sense). For that matter, what is a correct statement of the "general" case, going beyond the simple puzzle about 50 state names? It would be an interesting subject for theoretical analysis. Looking back a bit, no one seems to have followed up on an interesting suggestion someone made about using prime numbers to solve the puzzle. (Unfortunately, I have lost the original posting so I cannot credit the poster.) I think the suggestion was to assign prime numbers to the letters of the alphabet and then do a product of the letter-values of the state names. I haven't tested this idea. Has anyone else? Does it generate unusably huge numbers? I'll try to do some experiments in this area ... maybe ... time permitting. > I hope people have (are still having) fun with this! This has been great fun, though right now I'm just reading and pondering. Jeez Louise, who's got time to write code?!? Charlie Hethcoat ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Unicon-group mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unicon-group
