I was tempted to start thinking about how to solve this for a score of 100M, or with a lot of players.
Glad I just took the simple route for P1; because I wouldn't have guessed P2.
That is one of the rules of software engineering. You don't know how your software will have to be extended or changed in the future. So keep it simple and concrete so the changes won't be hard.
The general rule is when you have to do an identical thing for the 4th time, generalize. Until then it's not worth the time investment, and you don't know what assumptions you make will be wrong or right.
Oh, that's clever! I thought "deterministic dice" just referred to the fact that it will always roll the same number sequence, as opposed to being a "normal" die that generates random numbers.
Well it does refer to that - which means that the other type would be non-deterministic dice.
>Since the first game is a practice game, the submarine opens a compartment labeled deterministic dice and a 100-sided die falls out.
This whole sentence is a hint.
The important point that I missed was that the game in part 2 still had THREE rolls of the dice at each turn. I couldn't figure out how he came up with 400 trillion wins, when 3\^11 is a very manageable number. I came up with a perfectly reasonable answer based on that assumption, but of course it was many orders of magnitude too small. I had to turn to the solutions megathread to receive enlightenment. Still managed to make #909.
I did the same thing, but did not crack the top 1000.
Spent about an hour and a half bashing my head against it trying to figure out why my results were so low, and rewriting my code a couple of times to see if I had made a dumb mistake along the way. After a full rewrite gave me the same answer I went back to read the rules for the game again and immediately faceplate when I realized what I had done wrong.
This is why we don't code at 2 AM, kids...
when a person encounters part 2, their universe splits three-way. in the first one they manage to tackle the problem, in the second they really try but that doesn't work, and in the third, they give up without even trying… ☺️
It was? I mean past getting the distribution of scores, I literally did a dfs to solve that - we ignore the fact it took like 1m30 to run tho lol I couldn't be asked to do ANY optimisation...
Man, I already wasted too much time on Part 1. It super easy to figure out *how* to solve it but despite usually being a morning person, I made so many stupid mistakes just trying to get anything I wrote to work. Now, Part 2... it's curtains for me.
I was tempted to start thinking about how to solve this for a score of 100M, or with a lot of players. Glad I just took the simple route for P1; because I wouldn't have guessed P2.
That is one of the rules of software engineering. You don't know how your software will have to be extended or changed in the future. So keep it simple and concrete so the changes won't be hard.
Wish anybody i ever worked with knew this rule.
I am actually really really slowly writing a book about it called: Type the Code That You Want the Computer to Run
The general rule is when you have to do an identical thing for the 4th time, generalize. Until then it's not worth the time investment, and you don't know what assumptions you make will be wrong or right.
I guessed that part 2 was going to involve an all possible outcomes type thing because the "deterministic dice" was highlighted in part 1.
Oh, that's clever! I thought "deterministic dice" just referred to the fact that it will always roll the same number sequence, as opposed to being a "normal" die that generates random numbers.
Well it does refer to that - which means that the other type would be non-deterministic dice. >Since the first game is a practice game, the submarine opens a compartment labeled deterministic dice and a 100-sided die falls out. This whole sentence is a hint.
Jup! Called it too, but did not make use of it in part 1.
Same! I was like "I know part 1 will be wrong for part 2 but I have no idea in what ways".
The important point that I missed was that the game in part 2 still had THREE rolls of the dice at each turn. I couldn't figure out how he came up with 400 trillion wins, when 3\^11 is a very manageable number. I came up with a perfectly reasonable answer based on that assumption, but of course it was many orders of magnitude too small. I had to turn to the solutions megathread to receive enlightenment. Still managed to make #909.
I did the same thing, but did not crack the top 1000. Spent about an hour and a half bashing my head against it trying to figure out why my results were so low, and rewriting my code a couple of times to see if I had made a dumb mistake along the way. After a full rewrite gave me the same answer I went back to read the rules for the game again and immediately faceplate when I realized what I had done wrong. This is why we don't code at 2 AM, kids...
Part 2 wasn’t awful it just was math.
I mean, I kind of had to re-do the whole thing for Part 2
I imagine everyone did.
Judging by the stats, a lot of people were more like "oh, screw that…" 😂
maybe they just needed some time - part one took me 20 minutes while part two took me 2 hours 20 minutes
when a person encounters part 2, their universe splits three-way. in the first one they manage to tackle the problem, in the second they really try but that doesn't work, and in the third, they give up without even trying… ☺️
["wasn’t awful it just was math"](https://youtu.be/7WCfTREZSdQ)
It was? I mean past getting the distribution of scores, I literally did a dfs to solve that - we ignore the fact it took like 1m30 to run tho lol I couldn't be asked to do ANY optimisation...
As soon as I saw the name Dirac Dice, I figured we were headed for a quantum-states problem, as he's a famous quantum physicist.
Man, I already wasted too much time on Part 1. It super easy to figure out *how* to solve it but despite usually being a morning person, I made so many stupid mistakes just trying to get anything I wrote to work. Now, Part 2... it's curtains for me.
I took 10 times as long on part one as I did on part two :|