in reply to (Golf) Minimizing the Bacon Number

Damn you and your NP-complete problems! =) Well, I'm lazy, and decided to implement a greedy, suboptimal heuristic: 
sub bacon {
  my%t=@_;(sort{@{$t{$b}}<=>@{$t{$a}}}keys%t)[0]
}

[download]
At least it's fast, if not correct. :) 
   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

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Re: Re: (Golf) Minimizing the Bacon Number
by Masem (Monsignor) on May 14, 2001 at 23:35 UTC
    This problem shouldn't be NP-complete. A well-rounded algorithm is going to be, I believe, O(N^2) or O(N^3). However, the golf solution will probably be NP.
    Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
[reply]
      Sorry to ask but my curiosity is too big...
      What is NP (or NP-complete) ?
      Thanks.

      BobiOne KenoBi ;)

[reply]

        An NP problem is a programming problem that can only be solved by the theoretical nondeterministic Turing machine (NP stands for Nondeterministic Polynomial). An NP-Complete problem has the property that if you can find a polynomial running time solution to this problem than you can find a polynomial solution to all other NP problems as well. Unfortunately, that works both ways, if you prove that there is no polynomial solution to the problem than all other NP problems don't have a polynomial runtime as well.

        For more information, look here.

        Hope This Helps,
        jynx

        Update: D'oh! Beaten by MeowChow...

[reply]
[reply]

        Search Google: NP-complete

        Update: Didn't see the above posts...whoops.

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