In Part 1 of this series, we showed how a solution to the puzzle could be represented simply by the sequence of 12 pieces in the order we place them, given an agreed upon strategy of where to place pieces. …
One morning, Grady walks into the office and leaves a couple of wooden puzzles on the shared table in the Data Management Team area. Many of us were nerd-sniped that day. This is a tale of how one single puzzle …
Recently, profiling showed me that most of the time in the microbenchmark I was running was spent generating the stream of random numbers using Random.nextGaussian. I didn’t need a high-quality Gaussian distribution—I just wanted some moderately realistic numbers—so, mostly …
This past weekend, I needed to find a good fraction to approximate a given value. Along the way, I learned about continued fractions, and emerged with a neat, efficient algorithm. The only trouble is, I can’t figure out why it …
