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

[Dr. Gernot Starke]

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
> _______________________________________________
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> rules-users at lists.jboss.org
> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users
>

Dr. Gernot Starke
Doing IT Right

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