alexr_rwx: (Default)
Alex R ([personal profile] alexr_rwx) wrote2003-10-26 08:30 pm

Extreme Sunday Night Excitement

It's a good day.

It's cold and rainy, and I just put down a pot of coffee made just how I like it, and my AI project is coming along nicely, and my friends are cool and wise and life is beautiful. Today I played the trombone with the brass ensemble in church, and that was pleasing. We (Marty [livejournal.com profile] samarin and Amber [livejournal.com profile] child_herald and myself) headed out to eat lovely lovely Chinese food at the Chinese Buddha, and then we looked at the Ansel Adams and Black-women-wearing-Church-Hats exhibits at the High Museum, and it was excellent, if somewhat crowded, because admission was free and it was a rainy day, good for going to a museum.

I'm going running in a bit.

Genetic algorithms suck at solving at least two of the three problems I'm trying to apply them to ("four peaks" and "six peaks", which have to do with counting sequences of bits in a big bit-string -- they're pretty much just toy example problem domains)... and pretty soon I'll find out if they suck for map-colouring as well (which I gather is a pretty applicable sort of constraint-satisfaction problem, like one that would come up in Real Life fairly often). But I think that GAs are going to do pretty well for map colouring.

I remember (and I wonder if you did this too) back in elementary school, at the gifted program we had, doing these really interesting logic problems where you had to find out, out of Billy, Jed, Emily and Angustias, who liked to drink what sort of juice, who had what colour bike, and so on... and you were given a bunch of clues, like "the girl who likes to drink grapefruit juice doesn't ride the green bike". And then you'd go "Oh, so Billy and Jed aren't grapefruit, and whoever has grapefruit doesn't have green." ... and you'd keep going through the clues until you got the puzzle all worked out, and it turned out that Jed would drink cranberry juice and ride the purple bike. This is the sort of problem that'd be pretty much like a big map-colouring, I think.

And you know what? There's a puzzle towards the end of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone that's very much like this (it has to do with figuring out which potion to drink), and I set out to solve it when I was reading that (years ago) and I think there's not enough information given to actually solve it.

So... yeah.

Back to work. Or running.

Hey there!

[identity profile] mirabiliae.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 04:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Hi Alex! This is Kelsey! Garrett told me about how you got him a livejournal, and I thought it was about time I got with the program too! I hope you are well- it sounds like you are. Sending good vibes your way....let's chat soon :)
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Re: Hey there!

[identity profile] oniugnip.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh my goodness, it's Kelsey!

*happy dance, adds to Friends List*

Wonderful to see you! Yes -- we should chat, definitely. Tell us stuff about what you've been up to and thinking and feeling and Princeton and everything! :)

[identity profile] eponis.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 05:49 pm (UTC)(link)
No, there isn't enough information in it. There would be if you could see the bottles, but it doesn't give enough information about what they look like. :-)
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[identity profile] oniugnip.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I thought you'd know :) And I suspected that you would've taken a stab at that yourself.

[identity profile] lizzie.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I love those logic problems. I need to find some and do them. Yea!

[identity profile] child-herald.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Angustias. The answer is always Angustias.

And Jed's only going to get 27% cranberry juice unless he happens to spot it in the Healthy Food aisle of his local Publix.
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[identity profile] oniugnip.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 10:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Angustias... in the Conservatory... with the lead pipe!

Ooh. That's another interesting problem domain. I'm so going to automate Clue.