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

Mon Aug 6 05:42:04 EDT 2007

Hi all,

there is already a correct solution. Good job Chris! Thanks to the
participators too! 

Interested people can deliver your solution to:

droolspuzzle at gmail.com

Looking forward to more submissions! Any advice/suggestion to the Drools
Puzzle itself is also welcome, thanks in advance!

Regards,
Ellen
PS: Mark said it's no problem for the Drools team to give away things
like T-Shirts for awards. Winners can have whatever they wish printed on it.

Ellen Zhao wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Now you can deliver your solution to:
>
> droolspuzzle at gmail.com
>
> Good luck to all!
>
>
> Regards,
> Ellen
>
> On 7/29/07, Dr. Gernot Starke <gs at gernotstarke.de> wrote:
>   
>> 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 at lists.jboss.org
>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users
>>>
>>>       
>> Dr. Gernot Starke
>> Doing IT Right
>>
>> ---
>> Willi-Lauf Allee 43, D-50858 K�ln
>> gs at gernotstarke.de,
>>   +49 (0) 177 - 728 2570
>> http://www.gernotstarke.de
>> Blog: http://it-and-more.blogspot.com
>> ****************************************
>> Das freie Portal f�r Software-Architekten:
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>>
>>
>>
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>>     
>
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