Talk:Dinesman's multiple-dwelling problem: Difference between revisions

::I thought finding a solution is no problem - brute force it if you must. The emphasis should be on stating the problem and presenting the resultw.r.t. the problem as stated. I tried to give hints that parsing the text of the problem statement allowing for variability, as well as stating what that variability is, is an avenue one might want to follow. The right answer is <u>expected</u>. How you get to it is very important. --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 17:20, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

:About the python solution: parsing natural language is FUTILE unless you specify a clear subset of English language you are going to use. Is your program able to parse "A lives somewhere below B"? Or "A's floor is no higher than 4"? Or if one of the characters involved is in fact named "Mr. Floor?" I don't think one should go on writing a parser without a clear spec of what text might be involved. --[[User:Ledrug|Ledrug]] 00:47, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

:::And we haven't gotten to the part of optimizing the code itself yet: what happens when there are twenty tenents? J code runs out of memory, every other one takes eaons to complete, if at all. But that's another can of worms. --[[User:Ledrug|Ledrug]] 01:26, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

::::Re-read my first submission on this talk page, written before your C example. It is the very nature of this task to permit "artistic license" and to encourage, but not limit the solutions to examples that parse the problem statement - that is why it is mentioned both here and in the task statement. The task asks for allowing some variation and to show how "easy" it is to vary. <br>I too found it difficult, at first, to give much more than the right answer to maths essay problems. --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 06:10, 26 June 2011 (UTC)