I’d like to revisit the discrete convolution problem described in my previous post, to consider the expressiveness of functional programming. Here I am interested in the power of code to communicate intent; the bare metal speed of the code is secondary. The various comments and proposed implementations in this Google Groups thread are what got [...]
Archives for July 2010
Discrete convolution of finite vectors
Isaac Hodes posted a request to both StackOverflow and the Clojure mailing list, asking for some help implementing a discrete convolution function in Clojure. I am trying to create a lazy/functional/efficient/Clojuresque function to carry out convolution on two lists/vectors of (ideally BigDecimals but that may be inefficient) doubles. … Right now, it seems as though [...]
British Lottery Puzzle
Have I mentioned that I’m a sucker for probability puzzles? I found this one at ibbly.com: Two teams from opposite ends of the country have been drawn to play each other in a competition. They need to determine which team plays at home and do so fairly at a distance. They decide to try to [...]
The Matchbook Problem
I have been reading a lovely book by Paul Nahin, Digital Dice. The book is subtitled Computational Solutions to Practical Probability Problems. I don’t know how practical the problems are, but they are a lot of fun. Probability theory is rife with seemingly simple problems which turn out to be less simple than first appears. [...]
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