Brian Peasland wrote:
>> I find it fascinating how we used similar names for objects without ever
>> seeing each others' work and choose totally different approaches.
>
> Not too terribly surprising to me. You're modeling an entity and people
> often come up with the same attribute names even if they are for
> completely different purposes.
>
>> Anyone else with a way of avoiding brute force?
>
> Since you're in the .EDU world, have you leveraged some of your
> resources on campus? When I was working on my Masters, a course in
> Artificial Intelligence was a required course for graduation. Some of
> the work you're doing here is right up that alley. Brute force is one AI
> technique, but it often is the most time consuming method. Rote learning
> might help, but it might be hard to code for you too. Pattern
> recognition can help too, for instance, I see the following pattern in
> Sudoku all the time
>
> x x x 1 x x x
> x x x 4 2 x x x
> x x x 3 x x x
> x x x a x x x
> 5 x x x
> x x x a x x x
> x x x x x x
> x x x 5 x x x
> x x x x x x
>
> In the above, the 'x' values are unknown and don't factor in to the
> example. In the center "square", the 5 value can only be in the spots
> located by 'a', even though there are no other values in that square.
> The other values limit '5' to those two spots. This type of "pattern"
> can be stored, recognized, and use to limit where 5 can go in that
> center square.
>
> There are many other patterns in Sudoku as well. The following pattern
> is an easy one to determine what the missing value is:
>
> 1 5 7 9 2 x 8 6 3
>
> Similarly, this pattern can be easily solved:
>
> 1 9 5
> 7 3 x
> 6 8 2
>
> Play as many Sudoku games as I have (I'm addicted to
> http://www.websudoku.com) and you'll see other patterns as well. Most of
> the patterns I use get me to know that a number goes in one of two
> spots. An additional clue is needed later to figure out which spot to
> eliminate. If you play on Websudoku, you can use the "pencil" feature to
> note which two spots a particular value can reside.
>
> I'm not sure how you'd code all of this in PL/SQL. When I did my AI
> work, we made heave use of storing patterns and other rote learning on
> the file system. Since this is PL/SQL, you'd probably store these things
> in a database table.
>
> Anyway...I'm definitely no AI expert. And I tossed my college text for
> the AI class a long time ago. But if I were on a university campus, I'd
> head over to my Comp Sci department and talk with a prof specializing in
> AI. Or, I'd hit up some grad students doing their work in AI. If they're
> CompSci geeks and love Sudoku, they might even help you for free! Just
> for the sport of it!
>
> Cheers,
> Brian
Good recommendation. I'm on it.
Well just as soon as Jonathan Lewis, Tom Kyte, Hans Forbrich, and Mark
Townsend blow town. ;-)
Thanks.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Received on Wed Apr 12 2006 - 23:55:22 CDT
