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

Tue Jul 31 05:03:42 EDT 2007

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 Köln
> gs at gernotstarke.de,
>   +49 (0) 177 - 728 2570
> http://www.gernotstarke.de
> Blog: http://it-and-more.blogspot.com
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>
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-- 
Ellen Ning Zhao
Department of Computer Science
University of Applied Science of Kaiserslautern at Zweibruecken

Tel: +49-179-7447898
homepage: http://ningning.org/