Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#31

Post by RiderOfGiraffes » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 12:56 PM UTC

mzl wrote: post #30

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do that, but found some of the various combinations too difficult to maintain. I tend to count to 10 on each hand, counting the thumb as five and a fist as ten.

Slightly more efficient, and still easy to do, is to use one hand for 0-9 (thumb counts as five), and the other for 0,10,20,...,90. Easy counting, setting, and reading of the current number.

Er, that's exactly what I meant. Sorry if I didn't make it clear, but I never considered that someone would believe I counted to 10 on one hand, then another 10 on the other.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#32

Post by allenp » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

pronoiac wrote: post #11

stakent wrote: post #10

Sorting room full of dated reports from several dozens of years. First pass: put raports in the bins year by year maintaining sort order in the bins. Binary search used to place new report in the bin. Second pass: put year by year sorted reports in the correct order on the shelfs. I don't remeber the name of the algorithm used and the book from which it come was given to the library.

I'd break the first pass down further, putting items into the (yearly) bins without sorting within each bin, freeing up bins, then subdividing them into smaller piles (say, by month), then sorting those. This insight is courtesy of a sorting algorithm that's optimal for systems with very limited memory but multiple tape systems, if I remember correctly. Also IIRC insertion sort can beat doing the binary sort in situa…

Also if you just put them into bins by year, you could have others do the sorting per bin - so more of a distributed model.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#33

Post by bockris » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 1:39 PM UTC

I defrag my laundry. ;-) http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200308/df20030814.jpg

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#34

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 1:40 PM UTC

I park first-fit; my wife parks best-fit. We drive each other crazy.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#35

Post by eqdw » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 4:09 PM UTC

I've used resource allocation and scheduling quite a bit. It's amazing how much of Operating Systems bleeds over into the real world

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#36

Post by eqdw » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 4:10 PM UTC

yogsototh wrote: post #21

I count to 31 with one hand. I use the standard count up to 5 with one hand just for communication purpose.

I use base six, with one hand being 6s and one hand being 1s. It's a tradeoff between counting capacity and ease of calculation.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#37

Post by Travis » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 4:37 PM UTC

I use graph algorithms when I'm walking somewhere downtown. With the shortest path defined by lights that are green / red. Sometimes I'll switch it up a bit and use a different search algorithm just for variety.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#38

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 4:48 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #8

I was trying to spot my friend in a crowded room so I did a regexp visual search for people with brown hair. I was feeling pretty tired last night so I decided to put myself into sleep mode. I'm now too ashamed of myself to make up a third.

I usually grep for socks.

Re: Ask HN: How have you applied computer science IRL?

#39

Post by chad_oliver » Fri, Oct 29, 2010, 1:03 AM UTC

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #24

chad_oliver wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how? I can understand 12 (use your thumb to count the 3 joints on each of your 4 fingers), but 31?

Binary. Five (biological) digits giving 5 bits. So color me confused - your profile says: > I love hardware hacking > and low-level programming. How can you not see 31 and think "5 bits" ?

That's a cool solution!

In answer to your question: because I'm still learning. I'm in my first year at university, and while I love working with microcontrollers, a lot of the knowledge hasn't quite got there. I'm working on it!

Also, I forgot about starting at zero (yeah, I know).