[VA] SRC #012a - Then and Now: Probability

[Valentin Albillo]

 
Hi, J-F,

J-F Garnier Wrote:So I propose the use Valentin's solution as the reference [...]
VA's reference solution: 91"
my solution : 63" = 0.69 in Valentin's units :-)
Note I used the symmetry of the problem.

I don't get it. You say my "reference solution" runs in 91", but ... on which hardware/software !?

As far as I can tell, so far my solution runs in these times:

3496.49" (58’16.49”) on an actual, physical HP-71B (Fernando del Rey dixit)
  27.46" on my 4-yo Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 tablet (Android)
 ~ 3 hr  on a Sharp PC-1403H (Dave Britten dixit)
 126.92" on Emu71/DOS, running under DOSBOX, unknown hardware (A.Chan dixit)

so from where did you take those 91" you adscribe to my solution ?

As an additional comment, I don't think that merely comparing runtimes among different solutions is meaningful even for the exact same hardware/software, because other factors also play a big role, among them the following come to mind:

• general program (works for any starting positions because it doesn't rely on symmetry) vs. program particularized for symmetric starting positions (rely on symmetry to halve memory requirements and speed up the computation but won't work at all on non-symmetric starting positions.)
   
• didactic program whose inner workings are readily understandable to any newcomer upon seeing the problem's definition and the listing vs. highly-optimized but overwhelmingly unfathomable code to most people upon looking at the listing.
   
• ability to answer the additional questions very easily from the command line once the program has been run vs. very dificult/impossible to answer those additional questions from the command line due to very intrincate element addressing.
  

As you can see, without taking those factors and others into accound the comparisons are mostly meaningless.

Thanks for your continued interest in this problem and best regards.
V.