Ranok's Ramblings » triangles http://www.r4n0k.com A peek into my life, and the projects I never complete Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:36:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Computers Like Rectangles http://www.r4n0k.com/2009/05/24/computers-like-rectangles/ http://www.r4n0k.com/2009/05/24/computers-like-rectangles/#comments Sun, 24 May 2009 12:59:32 +0000 ranok http://www.r4n0k.com/?p=192 The other day I was at a friend’s house, and while waiting for the oven to preheat, I stumbled across a game I once played as a child, a triangular peg board where the goal is to remove pegs such that there is only one peg remaining. I was thinking of devising a program to attempt to solve the puzzle, much like my programming languages assignment last year to solve a slide puzzle. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how attached the conventional computer science paradigm is to rectangular data. It is almost too easy to write a program to play checkers (or at least manipulate the pieces on a board), but it is certainly non-trivial to write a simple and efficient algorithm the maintain the board state. I think it’s rather interesting how the problems we generally have to solve fit rather nicely into their little rectangles, and how few problems require other shapes.

For a solution to the peg board problem, I found this site that documents the author’s process and a code listing. If you’re interested in the game as much (or more) than that the programmatic solution, there are also a number of statistics for possible solutions on the site.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

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