Algorithms – Page 8

Optimizing Collatz Sequence with Dynamic Programming

February 23, 2012February 23, 2012Adnan Masood1 Comment

Even though Kurtz and Simon proved that a natural generalization of the Collatz problem is algorithmically undecidable, it is still fairly easy to brute force the 3n+1 conjecture with large values of n and empirically see it converge. Project Euler's problem 14 queries about which starting number, under one million, produces the longest sequence? Since Premature optimization is often considered root…

On Unit testing Bentley's binary search overflow condition

February 9, 2012February 9, 2012Adnan Masood

One of the few unit tests one would write for a simple arithmetic operation such as addition is a check for overflow i.e. if the resulting value is of the operand type and therefore does not cause overflow error. More often than not, programmers mistakenly consider this issue to be GC's responsibility in case of…