Re: Spreading out the elements

Or, to put it a different way - given a barbecue, a bunch of beef cubes, and a number of cherry tomatoes, how would you arrange the skewers in such a way that a) there's a beef chunk at the beginning and the end of every skewer, b) each skewer is arranged in as even a manner as possible, and c) you use up all the beef and all the tomatoes?

I can meet all of the requirements, without actually meeting the intent of the question -- put all of the tomatoes in the middle of the skewer, evenly divided across all of the skewers (within rounding tolerances).

(NO, that's *not* the real problem... :)

I would hope not. Cherry tomatoes and beef cubes have much different cooking issues -- the tomatoes will get all soft and fall off if you cook 'em too long. I much prefer assembling each skewer w/ a single ingredient, cooking them, then pulling 'em off onto a large platter and mixing it together. (and I'm not a fan of grilled tomatoes ... if you want, slice 'em up, a little salt, pepper and fresh basil, and they make a fine salad on the side)

Comment on Re: Spreading out the elements

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Re^2: Spreading out the elements by oko1 (Deacon) on Jul 05, 2007 at 16:59 UTC
> Cherry tomatoes and beef cubes have much different cooking issues -- the tomatoes will get all soft and fall off if you cook 'em too long. I'm not sure how you're defining "too long", but - not in my experience. I didn't just come up with that example randomly: I stopped working on the problem to go to a party, where I explained what I was doing to a friend - and pointed out that she was using a similar algorithm at that very moment, since she was making up those skewers. They came out just fine, by the way - nothing fell off. As to the side salad - that's how I prefer my tomatoes as well, although I'm likely to throw in some Romanian feta ("telemea"), add a little cumin, and chop up some fresh dill. And I certainly wouldn't use cherry tomatoes, either. :)	[reply]

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Re^2: Spreading out the elements
by oko1 (Deacon) on Jul 05, 2007 at 16:59 UTC

I'm not sure how you're defining "too long", but - not in my experience. I didn't just come up with that example randomly: I stopped working on the problem to go to a party, where I explained what I was doing to a friend - and pointed out that she was using a similar algorithm at that very moment, since she was making up those skewers. They came out just fine, by the way - nothing fell off.

As to the side salad - that's how I prefer my tomatoes as well, although I'm likely to throw in some Romanian feta ("telemea"), add a little cumin, and chop up some fresh dill. And I certainly wouldn't use cherry tomatoes, either. :)

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