"Algorithm" is not a four letter word • Hacker News Board

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#31

Post by jamis » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 1:25 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #26

"Play" is boring if it isn't challenging. I completely disagree with the dichotomy presented at the start of this presentation. It seems to imply that improving is painful, and is something you need to force yourself to do. (Furthermore, I've never found learning about new algorithms to be taxing, and certainly never regarded it as a four-letter word.)

My intent was definitely not to portray learning as painful. Learning is a joyful thing. But it's not something you can acquire by passively staring at the world. You need to exert yourself if you want to do more than gain a passing acquaintance with things.

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#32

Post by dazbradbury » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 1:46 AM UTC

angrycoder wrote: post #27

dazbradbury wrote: post #24

I feel I should point out that a lot of people would consider this bad advice. "It is critical to remember that play is not exercise." Focusing on what are you're good at (like algorithms for creating mazes), is in fact exercise. You're getting better at what you already consider yourself good at (assuming you don't stagnate - which I think the article is really getting at.) Should you focus on weaknesses or strength…

The problem is that you are arguing the analogy. What you are saying neither fits the point or spirit of his slide show.

I am just pointing out that the start of the slideshow is a little unnecessary and potentially off-putting, I quite enjoyed the concise diagrams and animations which followed.

I think those with a CS degree and a good understanding of graph theory should still sit and enjoy it!

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#33

Post by palish » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 1:49 AM UTC

swannodette wrote: post #18

I'd like point out something that isn't mentioned in the slides at all. The ideas behind the algorithm are not just games, not just exercises, not just methods of self improvement. I'm reminded of Feynman's story of the wobbling plate. They have very deep implications for how we design programs and how we design programming languages. The notion of search (logic programming, constraint solving) is a woefully under ap…

"The ideas behind the algorithm are not just games"

Clarifying, sorry.. could you elaborate a bit on what you meant by "games"?

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#34

Post by alexkay » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 1:51 AM UTC

Doesn't work in FF7.

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#35

Post by palish » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 2:01 AM UTC

robobenjie wrote: post #6

I like the visualizations for the maze generation a lot. I actually used (yet another) maze generation algorithm for an xbox360 game I worked on as a school project. The constraints were slightly different because we wanted cycles and no dead ends. You put all the cells in a list and take them out at random. If there are 3 or more walls, tear down walls until there are less than 3. When you are done you cannot have a…

A point P is inside triangle ABC iif the angles add up to 2pi. (APB + BPC + CPA == 2pi)

Thought I'd share too, don't have a point. :) graphics programming / dot product is neat.

Actually, there are some pretty fun graphics algorithms. I could ramble on about some, but don't want to intrude / doubt anyone cares but me, heh.

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#36

Post by kragen » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 2:25 AM UTC

fl3tch wrote: post #25

Another warning, for photosensitive epileptics: there are rapidly flashing lights in that demo. I have a mild form of it and I started to feel weird, so if you're highly sensitive, you'll want to skip running the maze on the slide labeled "aldous-broder-demo". Here's a tip for UX people: don't make anything flash more than 2 times per second. Also, "in the United States, websites provided by federal agencies are gove…

How would you recommend visualizing that algorithm?

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#37

Post by kragen » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 2:37 AM UTC

There's some good stuff here, but a lot of the psychology is ill-founded. Flow, for example, is probably the most effective form of practice, and play often creates flow. Jamis recommends practicing constantly, but it's extremely well established that spacing your practice out gives you more bang for the buck, more improvement per hour of practice. (This is called "massed practice vs. spaced practice", and it's been known since before the dawn of cognitive psychology.)

(There's some pretty good evidence that you can fill the spaces in between your practice sessions by practicing something else — without losing the benefit of spacing.)

The maze generation algorithms, though, are awesome.

My favorite is still this one by Joe Allen:

    /*  jallen@ic.sunysb.edu  */     /* Amazing */     /* Joe Allen 129.49.12.74 */
    int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0)
    +r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0:p%79-77?1:0:p158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2
    ]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#38

Post by jamis » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 3:02 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #37

There's some good stuff here, but a lot of the psychology is ill-founded. Flow, for example, is probably the most effective form of practice, and play often creates flow. Jamis recommends practicing constantly, but it's extremely well established that spacing your practice out gives you more bang for the buck, more improvement per hour of practice. (This is called "massed practice vs. spaced practice", and it's been…

I definitely was not recommending constant practice--I agree that doing so will hurt you more than it helps you! I was recommending consistently regular practice.

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#39

Post by jrockway » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 3:31 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #36

fl3tch wrote: post #25

Another warning, for photosensitive epileptics: there are rapidly flashing lights in that demo. I have a mild form of it and I started to feel weird, so if you're highly sensitive, you'll want to skip running the maze on the slide labeled "aldous-broder-demo". Here's a tip for UX people: don't make anything flash more than 2 times per second. Also, "in the United States, websites provided by federal agencies are gove…

How would you recommend visualizing that algorithm?

Visualizing algorithms is unfair, because some people were born without vision and therefore cannot "visualize".

Re: "Algorithm" is not a four letter word

#40

Post by code_duck » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 3:50 AM UTC

Permit wrote: post #4

Personally I really enjoyed the short slide by slide format a lot. Perhaps it's a short attention span brought on by years in front of a computer, but I struggle with massive walls of text occasionally. At the very least I found it to be a nice changed on top of being an interesting subject.

I was hoping someone had a text version. This form is like a video: I could read all of that in about 30 seconds, probably, versus clicking through for one sentence at a time over 10 minutes. I don't need 40 drawings of smiley faces to understand this.