[Noisebridge-discuss] Project Euler group

Seth David Schoen schoen at loyalty.org
Sat Oct 3 00:59:22 UTC 2009


I'd like to organize a group of people to work on Project Euler
problems at Noisebridge.

http://www.projecteuler.net/

This is a web site with around 250 discrete math problems, in roughly
increasing order of difficulty, which are meant to be solved by writing
a computer program.  Easy example: "Find the 10001st prime" (problem
7, solved by 41358 people); harder example: "Find the sum of all n,
0<n<64,000,000 such that [the sum of the squares of the divisors of n]
is a perfect square" (problem 211, solved by 719 people).  Many of the
problems dramatically demonstrate that an efficient program can be
_much_ more effective than an inefficient one, and the site maintainer
promises that (given the right approach) each problem can be solved in
under 1 minute of CPU time on any modern computer.

The system tracks which problems each user has solved.  After you've
given the correct answer to a given problem, you get access to a
forum where you can see other people's code and discussions of that
problem.

I like Project Euler a lot and at certain points in the past I've
spent a lot of time working on some of the problems there.  They're
a fun set of exercises in programming and algorithmics, and I've
often thought that they would be a great match for Noisebridge.

I propose the following structure for this group:

* Regular weekly meetings of 40-60 minutes on some evening

* Create a "noisebridge" account on Project Euler, as well as individual
  accounts for participants

* Each week, choose k specific "individual" problems and n "group"
  problems where k>0 and n>0 and each of the group problems is harder
  than any individual problems (and the values of k and n are chosen
  by the group so that the total amount of time working on Project
  Euler is in a range that all participants are comfortable with)

* Try to solve the "group" problems together in person at the space,
  entering the answers into the noisebridge account

* Have people solve the "individual" problems on their own at home,
  and then present their answers to the group if there is any member
  who didn't manage to solve an individual problem

Participants would need to know how to program in some computer
language, but not all participants have to use the same language.

You don't need to be a math expert to participate; if interested
people turn out to have extremely different math backgrounds,
we'll figure out what to do to make sure the group is interesting
for everybody.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> | Qué empresa fácil no pensar en
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   | un tigre, reflexioné.
     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |            -- Borges, El Zahir



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