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

Mark Proctor mproctor at codehaus.org
Mon Aug 6 08:01:58 EDT 2007 

I have a few T-Shirts left, not sure what sizes though :( If the 
competitions prove popular I can look into getting some more printed of 
various sizes

Mark
Ellen Ning Zhao wrote:
> 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:
>>> http://www.arc42.de
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>>   
>>     
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