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Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 22:15:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFAList at KeithLynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Stop running SETI at home and make WSFA some money
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
There's a contest, described at
http://members.aol.com/bitzenbeitz/Contests/Triangles/
which will pay the winner $300.
The goal is to construct triangles of numbers such as
13 21 3 22 20 6
8 18 19 2 14
10 1 17 12
9 16 5
7 11
4
where each number is the (positive) difference between the two numbers
above. The constestant has to construct triangles with 2 through 25
numbers on a side, such that no two numbers in a triangle are equal.
Whoever has the smallest numbers wins. (Full details at the web site.)
Other examples:
13 3 15 14 6 8 1 10 6 4 6 1 3 1
10 12 1 8 7 9 4 2 5 2
2 11 7 2 5 3
9 4 3
5
There doesn't seem to be any elegant solution. The consensus on the
contest's discussion list is that it just has to be beaten to death
with raw CPU power.
For triangles up to 9 or 10, perhaps 11, on a side, the optimum
solution can be found in a reasonable amount of time. But for larger
triangles that's not practical. Especially since the contest ends on
October 15th. (I'm not sure all the computers in the world could find
the optimum solution for 25 on a side before the heat death of the
universe.) So the contest is unlikely to be a tie.
I don't have much hope of winning, since I don't have access to all
that much CPU power. (Only about as much as existed in the world
during the Apollo program.)
But it occurs to me that WSFA members have lots of powerful PCs. Some
of them are already running background processes such as SETI at home and
the Mersenne prime hunt.
I have written the programs (in C). If you have a C compiler on your
PC, please consider running the programs. If several members throw
enough computer power at this problem, I think we have a good chance
of winning the $300. And the club certainly needs it more than I do.
Plus, it's good publicity.
If anyone would prefer to write new programs instead, that's fine too.
Even better if you have some special insight into the problem.
--
Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
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