Timeline for How can I use Mathematica's graph functions to cheat at Boggle?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
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| Apr 25, 2013 at 15:12 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | @rm-rf "we were all like piranhas, trying to answer every question" - right, but I think that was necessary. We have created a high density of expert attention to get the site going. I believe that this is a critical component for the site to develop. Actually, I think that the current state where we have many more basic questions is partially due to the decrease of this density of expert attention, not only the other way around. | |
| Apr 25, 2013 at 15:00 | comment | added | rm -rf♦ | @LeonidShifrin I know, I was just kidding :) I too can't believe the speed at which time has passed by and especially since this time last year, we were all like piranhas, trying to answer every question to get the site going :) | |
| Apr 25, 2013 at 14:52 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | @rm-rf I don't know... May be not all stories should have a moral? This was just an observation. I am more concerned with the speed of time passing by, and my lack of productivity in the last year :) | |
| Apr 25, 2013 at 14:44 | comment | added | rm -rf♦ | @LeonidShifrin Wow, yes indeed! :) Moral of the story: Pretty pictures win in the short run, but performance catches up in the long run? ;) | |
| Apr 25, 2013 at 14:03 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | It took almost a year for my answer to catch up with yours in votes :). Seems like this all was yesterday. Time is flying ... | |
| May 11, 2012 at 18:46 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | It is also interesting that we essentially use the same graph-traversal algorithm, and the difference is only in how we store and query the dictionary. I think this makes my point about the importance of data structures even more appareant. I also think that the speed difference is so puzzling (at first) here because the true reasons for it are rather low-level from the "usual" Mathematica programming viewpoint. One has to understand what is going on behind the scenes when words are combined from characters, passed to functions etc. I haven't seen such a good example in a long time. | |
| May 11, 2012 at 15:28 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | @R.M. Good idea, will make that edit. | |
| May 11, 2012 at 15:17 | comment | added | rm -rf♦ | @LeonidShifrin I was very surprised too. The original trie question didn't fascinate me very much because there was nothing to highlight its advantage, but this clearly illustrates the advantages of using appropriate data structures. You should probably link to your answer here from the trie question — perhas a brief edit about this question and how using tries (which is natural for this problem) gives excellent performance. | |
| May 11, 2012 at 14:33 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | @R.M. I actually did not expect such timing differences. This is nearly the first non-trivial problem which showcases that top-level mma can beat built-ins (such as DictionaryLookup). I included the timing comparison not to diminish your (very fine) solution, but to illustrate the point with the appropriate data structures. I think this has not been emphasized enough, and again, this is by far the best example I know to make this point. As I said, I was quite surprised myself, this was a bit of a revelation for me. | |
| May 11, 2012 at 14:23 | history | edited | rm -rf♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 | animate full list of words instead of partial |
| May 11, 2012 at 14:21 | comment | added | rm -rf♦ | @LeonidShifrin It was the last chip I had... You've already won the speed game by a HUGE margin :) | |
| May 11, 2012 at 10:37 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | Nice visualization. I wanted to do something like this, but you did it first. +1. | |
| May 11, 2012 at 7:41 | history | edited | rm -rf♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 2671 characters in body |
| May 10, 2012 at 1:11 | comment | added | rcollyer | At the moment, I can't Leonid's to run, so I guess you can have your +1. | |
| May 10, 2012 at 0:58 | comment | added | rcollyer | Of course, you do realize that any +1 I give is dependent on whether or not you beat Leonid's Answer, right? | |
| May 9, 2012 at 22:34 | history | answered | rm -rf♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |