The Lone Ortho

Marooned on a secular college campus, I created this blog for the dual purpose of venting and sharing my experiences, pleasant and otherwise. Join me as I traverse the treacherous terrains of galus; it's been a harrowing, yet worthwhile journey thus far. Feel free to partake in the smattering of snide remarks, random Paul Simon references, and utterly ridiculous CS jokes.

Friday, November 12, 2004

Want a Challenge?

And now for the million dollar question…(drum roll please):

Sounds easy enough, right? Many have dedicated all of their genius to answering this question. You mission, dear readers, should you choose to accept it, is to solve this seemingly simple question. But like all great inquiries, such as how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll, the world may never know…..

Update: I didn't realize that when Jill said, "And now for the million dollar question.." that she meant it literally!!!! AWESOME.

posted by Devorah @ 11:03 AM  

17 Comments:

  • At 1:39 PM, Blogger TRW said…

    P does not equal NP except for in the case of said terrorist (see post below) or some other promoter of death and destruction.
    P=Person
    N=Not
    Dontcha love the humanities view on life? ;)

     

  • At 10:57 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Interesting—-but I get the feeling your theory might not fly with my algorithms professor. Perhaps with a mathematical proof….

     

  • At 12:20 AM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Interesting. But did anyone read the links??? :-(

     

  • At 12:31 AM, Blogger TRW said…

    Yes, but why would we want to post about Visual Basic? It's so unexciting..!

     

  • At 12:40 AM, Blogger Devorah said…

    It’s an *existential* question that’s not restricted to some measly programming language! I repeat, did anyone take the challenge and delve into the unfathomable?

     

  • At 3:12 PM, Blogger Keren Perles said…

    Believe it or not, I delved. And I drowned.

    Dearie, you're talking to an English major, a History major, and a (Bio? Chem? what are you?) major. Don't expect hash tables and splay trees to be sprouting out of our keyboards...

     

  • At 6:34 PM, Blogger TRW said…

    Hey-you're (sort of) a comp sci minor, so you should be familiar with these things...and devo-at least she used the terminology! ;)

     

  • At 5:26 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Huh? None of the links even mention hashtables, etc. Knowledge of these data structures is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. Actually, said problem can be understood by an individual with no training in computer science altogether (hence the encyclopedia entry provided). Alas, perhaps my challenge is best laid to rest :-(

     

  • At 12:42 AM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Well at least we’re finally dealing with the question at hand so I guess that counts as a step in the right direction. I disagree with your first statement. The elements in each set will not change since the growth order of an algorithm is determined irrespective of the speed of the processor that will be used to run it. Therefore, technological innovation will not improve the growth orders of current algorithms. The focus, rather, is on applying human ingenuity to the design of better algorithms, not better hardware. Even today with our uber-quick machines, an algorithm with exponential growth (like many of those used in AI) can take a very long time to run on a large data set.

     

  • At 3:42 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Why does (hu)mankind feel uncomfortable with the idea that there are unsolveable things out there - that we aren't the master of all logic. Why can't we accept that we are limitted, and feel comfortable with questions without answers. Does is threaten our security? Why can't we just rely on Faith. The infinite is beyond us. NP probably doesn't equal P, nor does it need to.

    YM

     

  • At 9:37 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    YM –
    You raise an interesting point. I concur that it is important for man to recognize his limitations; however, shouldn’t preclude him for thirsting for truth, from questing to unlock the universe’s mysteries. Certainly there are things beyond human comprehension. And as when learning Breishis, at some point “you just have to understand that you can’t understand.” (as my high school teacher would say…) But trusting that G-d’s infinite wisdom behind every creation cannot be fully fathomed shouldn’t curtail research in physics, genomics, etc. Personally, I sleep just fine knowing that the “Does P = NP?” question may never be solved. But I refuse to take as a matter of faith that it is impossible to solve. Perhaps it is. But why shouldn’t we try?

     

  • At 9:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You misunderstand me. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to solve it. I'm saying that I reckon the solution is that P does not equal NP. That is, at the end of the day, not all things can be solved. Logic is limitted. People would like, and feel more comfortable for P to equal NP, (then again, from a cryptography point of view, we'd prefer it not to equal...) because it implies man has more control, and can eventually solve all things, but in all probability this aint so, and we should feel comfortable with that.
    YM

     

  • At 10:11 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    YM –
    Thanks for the clarification. Yes, as most CS professors admit, P most likely doesn’t equal NP. Technically we probably cannot solve the problem of computing solutions for NP problems in polynomial time. Nonetheless, it would be somewhat satisfying to prove that we cannot solve this. Considering the fact that we suspect that P != NP, perhaps we can view the quest to solve the “does P = NP?” question as an ironic attempt to prove our own limitations.

     

  • At 10:19 PM, Blogger TRW said…

    And you say it doesn't require knowledge of computers or computing...dahlin, you lie.

     

  • At 10:24 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Lie on my blog? Chalila!! I stand by my original statement. You don’t need to know squat about computers to ponder the query presented here. Of course, knowledge thereof certainly helps..

     

  • At 10:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Devorah
    Pretty much what I was thinking - since probably P != NP we are jusst trying to prove our limitations...which as I explained is a fine way to be...But being as we are limitted, we are also having a hard time proving that we are limitted...

     

  • At 10:35 PM, Blogger Devorah said…

    Mad props to “YM” for bringing a new dimension to the discussion. Demerits to those who dared to mock the inquiry. ;-)

     

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