Incredible. My two-year-old forgets to include Lambek when lecturing on Curry-Howard-Lambek correspondence. Kids.
My two year old taught me constraint solving
21–30 of 39 posts
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#22Insidious "gift" idea: A set of wooden track pieces with lengths and join angles chosen such that no subset of them can form a closed loop. No matter what you try, it's always just a little bit off.
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#23While similarly playing brio with a two year old, I thought about a different dimension not mentioned here - super loose tolerances make the search space really weird. In true 2-year-old fashion, my kid would bend the rules as much as possible by literally forcing pieces to the edge of their tolerance to make things fit that shouldn't fit. 8 piece circle yea, cool, but with a sufficiently old brio set handed down for…
>if people can figure out a good way to map a set of pieces laid out with given tolerance ranges for piece
so you work in some space where extremely good visual understanding and ability to abstract in 3 dimensions is a prerequisite?
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#24While similarly playing brio with a two year old, I thought about a different dimension not mentioned here - super loose tolerances make the search space really weird. In true 2-year-old fashion, my kid would bend the rules as much as possible by literally forcing pieces to the edge of their tolerance to make things fit that shouldn't fit. 8 piece circle yea, cool, but with a sufficiently old brio set handed down for…
Why would that be a good interview question?
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#25The strongest insight here is that the SAT solver did not merely solve the same problem faster. It solved a better-formulated problem: choose the pieces as well as their placement.
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#26While similarly playing brio with a two year old, I thought about a different dimension not mentioned here - super loose tolerances make the search space really weird. In true 2-year-old fashion, my kid would bend the rules as much as possible by literally forcing pieces to the edge of their tolerance to make things fit that shouldn't fit. 8 piece circle yea, cool, but with a sufficiently old brio set handed down for…
That tolerance turns a clean combinatorial problem into a continuous one
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#27My three year old taught me something he saw on a YouTube video: you can search through a maze and find your way out just by keeping your right hand on the wall at all times and continuing till exit. Does a DFS.
A nice case of an algorithm being easier to learn physically than abstractly
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#28Had something similar to this with the kids with Lego Duplo tracks, similar topology but the switches gave the system state. Going "backwards" through a switch set the train to return that direction when coming the other way.
So we had a goal to make the train do interesting behaviors, like cover the entire track autonomously, pushing the switches itself. The biggest run I remember was a 4 bit counter.
Kid is now entering his last year of CS + Maths degree, so I guess it checks out.
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#29brio sets are for children 3 years and older...
Re: My two year old taught me constraint solving
#30Hilarious article. Surprised to see so many people missing the joke in the comments.