Re: [rules-users] Drools Puzzle #1: Ages of the sons

good idea - I'll give it a try :-) Gernot (the Prolog-guys did this regularly on their conferences - even published a book out of it). Gernot Am 28.07.2007 um 00:46 schrieb Ellen Zhao: > Hallo all! > > I talked about running a periodic puzzle solving contest in the user > mailing list to some people in the drools team. They have never done > it before so did not know how this contest will come out. However, I > was allowed to make the first try. If no body is interested, there > won't be any Drools Puzzle #2. Sorry for the spam if you do not like > this at all. In the end of this email you can see how I came up with > this idea. > > So, here is the puzzle for round No. 1: > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -------------------------------------------------------------- > Difficulty level: settler > > An old man asked a mathematician to guess the ages of his three sons. > > Old man said: "The product of their ages is 36." > Mathematician said: "I need more information." > > Old man said:"Over there you can see a building. The sum of their ages > equals the number of the windows in that building." > After a short while the mathematician said: "I need more information." > > Old man said: "The oldest son has blue eyes." > Mathematician said: "I got it." > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > This is a simple puzzle, you may not need any computer to solve it. > But here are the rules: > > 1. Solution (the core algorithm) must be written in drools. Any > dialect is allowed. Any DSL is allowed. > > 2. Any kind of user interface is allowed. > > 3. Make your program as easy to test as possible. Please attach a > simple and short readme file about how to build/test/deploy it. > > 4. The drools team will measure the performance of all submissions on > a same computer. > > 3. The winner will be allowed to post the next puzzle. > > 4. Any participator, no matter finally win or not, will get points for > each participation. Drools team will run a global ranking system and > build a hall of fame for all participators. At the end of the year, > the one who has most points will be awarded with ( Drools team please > fill here, something like a T-shirt or ?). Top ten people in the hall > of fame will be awarded with (Drools team please fill here). > > 5. If there are many, many participators, the Drools team might > consider things like "shortest run-time award", "least memory-usage > award", "best UI award", "shortest code award", etc. for each puzzle. > > 6. Currently the puzzle will come once half month. Submission deadline > of this round is August 15th, 2007. > > 7. Please do not post your solution to the user mailing list, since > everybody can see your program before the deadline. Drools team please > specify an email account to which participators can post solutions. > > 8. Best/inspiring solutions will be disclosed when next round is on. > > 9. If any Drools bug is caught during your solving of the puzzle, the > Drools team will award you with (Drools team please fill here). > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ------------------------------------------------------------- > > Any constructive advice and suggestion about the rules of Drools > Puzzle is welcome. > > Here is guideline for posting puzzles: > > 1. You do not want to scare people away with too difficult puzzles or > bore people with questions like 1+1=?, so please consider a proper > difficulty level for the puzzle. > > 2. NP-complete or NP-hard is okay. For some NP-hard problems, > sub-optimal solutions can be achieved efficiently. But do please tag > the difficulty level as something like "veteran", "guru", etc. > > 3. Complexity aside, there is still scope and testability > consideration. Puzzles like "How to integrate my 15 different kind of > services objects and my entity home with Drools?" might be > algorithmically not difficult, but the application-building can really > take a lot of time and energy, and it is not straightforward to test > the solution. > > 4. The purposes of this contest are: > 4.1 To learn from each other, enhance our programming skill and > learn good algorithms, good implementations. > 4.2 To encourage people to explore features of Drools. > 4.3 For fun. > So your puzzle should not take too much work to solve. It should not > mentally or physically torture participators. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ----------------------------------------------------------- > > This idea was inspired by a "Weekly Challenge" running on dpreview.com > user forum and GOTM from http://gotm.civfanatics.net/ > > On dpreview.com, a subject is posted by the winner of the prior week, > people can post their photos to compete. On civfanatics.net, an > initial configuration file is posted each month, and gamers submit > their end results for ranking. Both of these two non-official contests > are running very well, I hope Drools Puzzle will turn out a fun thing > too. > > > > Regards and nice weekend, > Ellen > _______________________________________________ > rules-users mailing list > rules-users(a)lists.jboss.org > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users > Dr. Gernot Starke Doing IT Right --- Willi-Lauf Allee 43, D-50858 Köln gs(a)gernotstarke.de, +49 (0) 177 - 728 2570 http://www.gernotstarke.de Blog: http://it-and-more.blogspot.com **************************************** Das freie Portal für Software-Architekten: http://www.arc42.de _______________________________________________ rules-users mailing list rules-users(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users