Pointless Information

Timballisto · July 29, 2006, 07:37:11 PM

Quote from: Mr. Ksoft on July 10, 2006, 04:19:48 AM
The "My Music" folder on my PC is 18.2 GB, contains 32,000+ songs, and occupies 13% of my hard drive.̆ Freaky stuff.

Only 13%?

Geez! That's a ton of space!

tseug · July 29, 2006, 11:03:52 PM

Quote from: Timballisto on July 29, 2006, 07:37:11 PM
Quote from: Mr. Ksoft on July 10, 2006, 04:19:48 AM
The "My Music" folder on my PC is 18.2 GB, contains 32,000+ songs, and occupies 13% of my hard drive. Freaky stuff.

Only 13%? Geez! That's a ton of space!

Yeah... where did you get a 140GB hard drive?

Liebatron · July 30, 2006, 12:49:52 AM

Divide that 140 by 14, then subtract 6. This is how many gigs my computer has.

It also 4 megs of video RAM...again,

-The reason I still have it, a dell can't play lemmings on it and keep the sound, :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:<-These guys don't work

Mr. K · July 30, 2006, 12:53:41 AM

140GB? It's a 250.

Timballisto · August 01, 2006, 06:38:35 PM

Whatever the case, where'd you get it from?

Mr. K · August 01, 2006, 07:33:30 PM

The drive or the music?

Drive: Came with computer. (HP Pavilion somethingorother)

Music: Uhhh... *wink*

tseug · August 07, 2006, 10:11:55 PM

My brother woke up at 3:10PM today.

EDIT: Then he went back to sleep.

Liebatron · August 10, 2006, 11:28:20 PM

Someone I know usually goes to bed at about 6:00 AM...

he needs to get more sleep.

Isu · December 27, 2006, 06:48:37 PM

Quote from: tseug on August 07, 2006, 10:11:55 PM
My brother woke up at 3:10PM today.

I did that once.

Pointless => I waited in a queue for about 45 minutes to buy a Wii game earlier. The queue spiralled around one of those long shelves about three times.

Lemika · January 04, 2007, 06:36:08 AM

I usually wake up around 2:00 or 3:00 PM. Of course, I usually go to sleep around 4:00 or 5:00 AM...

Isu · January 08, 2007, 12:35:32 PM

I'm currently viewing this page on my Wii. Since I finally got the wi-fi working...

Chmera · February 03, 2007, 04:00:58 PM

I have just acquired a craving for beef jerky, of the lemon-peppered variety. I am clueless as to why.

Timballisto · February 09, 2007, 12:19:34 AM

We're working on recursive programs in programming. I fail to see the point of it because most of the programs we've been doing (Tower of Hanoi, Pascal's Triangle) take FOREVER to run after you cross a certain point (8 with Pascal's triangle, for Hanoi...who knows and who cares? It's a dumb game anyway). Oh yeah. Also started making this random WCIII map. It's pretty cool...I think

.

Shvegait · February 20, 2007, 08:20:42 PM

Oh? What's your WC3 map like? If you need anyone to test, let me know.

About recursive programming:
It's silly that they teach you about these algorithms that are worthless, with "exponential time complexity", or O(2^n) time complexity.

But! Recursive programming is not worthless and doesn't always lead to algorithms with exponential time complexity. They do have many natural applications, like maze traversals, certain fast sorting algorithms, and plenty of others. It's perhaps a shame you were exposed to bad examples, although I think that would be a good time to introduce the concept of complexity and how there are problems that computers can't solve.

For the Tower's of Hanoi, that problem is known to take a ridiculous amount of time for a large number of discs. However, I'm a bit skeptical about Pascal's triangle choking after just 8 lines... maybe there was something else going on there.

ccexplore · February 20, 2007, 10:18:21 PM

Quote from: Shvegait on February 20, 2007, 08:20:42 PMAbout recursive programming:
It's silly that they teach you about these algorithms that are worthless, with "exponential time complexity", or O(2^n) time complexity.

But! Recursive programming is not worthless and doesn't always lead to algorithms with exponential time complexity.

In fact, they have nothing to do w/ each other. You can create algorithms in exponential time complexity and beyond w/o recursion, and conversely, you can create recursive algorithms that takes far less than exponential time (eg. one popular programming exercise w/ implementing factorials would result in a linear-time algorithm).

Recursion is simply an approach in creating an algorithm that works in the first place, the key approach being "divide and conquer".

QuoteIt's perhaps a shame you were exposed to bad examples

Actually, I think they are excellent examples. Tower of hanoi by design takes at least 2^n - 1 steps (or something close to that; I don't remember exactly) to carry out so the time complexity is a moot point. It's simply an example of a problem that is very well-suited to being solved recursively.

Pascal triangle works well because its mathematical formula can be expressed in a recursive manner. A naive implementation using recursion is of course not very fast, but mainly because the naive approach would keep recalculating the same stuff over and over in the process. I don't know how advance your programming class will go, but there are techniques such as memoization (not a misspelling), where you cache intermediate results that had already been calculated, which can turn your O(2^n) recursive algorithm into a recursive algorithm that only runs in O(n^2).

I suppose they might not be the most "fun" examples, but then again, you're in a programming class, what can I say...... :