Thursday 15 April 2010

A Challenge

For those of you who thought the Grand Prix sounded like fun or enjoy a puzzle, then I have a challenge for you.  Each week New Scientist pose an enigma; last week's can be found here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627557.200-enigma-number-1590.html

My challenge is see how fast you can solve the enigma using Alteryx!  In the same way as in the Grand Prix allow yourself thinking time beforehand and start the clock when you drag on the first tool, stop it when you have a solution.  This one took me 15 minutes and 45 seconds.  Anyone think they can solve it faster?

My solution can be found here:

4 comments:

  1. Hey Adam,

    You got us all going here in Boulder. Way too funny, my time matched yours to the second! I guess I should be embarrassed by that. Your solution is actually better than mine though - more direct. I built up the whole string and the parsed it back out again - I think I only matched your time because I know the product so well.

    Anyway, very fun.

    ned.

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  2. 20 minutes.

    I had essentially the same aproach as you, but I blew it on the "carefully reading the question" part, and wound up with the wrong formula down at the end. So I thought I was done but didn't get an answer and spent way too long looking for a bug that wasn't there.

    -Rob

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  3. I didn't time myself. I am sure it took me too long to figure out (because I was multiplying where I needed to add) but it was quite fun to do. Thanks Adam!

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  4. Well, I got there....in the end. I'll conveniently forget to mention the time taken, but it was a good challenge. Thanks, Adam.

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