MATLAB Programming Contest Blog

April 30th, 2008

The Spring 2008 contest officially starts now.

The contest is “Wiring” and as you will see in Ned’s  contest rules this topic was suggested by a contest fan, Edward Meyer. (Thanks Edward!)

If you are a veteran of our contests, you will probably jump right to the rules. If this is your first contest,  other good reads are About the contest and the FAQ.  To be truly inspired, take a look at our Hall of Fame to read about the winners of past contests.

Post any questions or comments you may have to the Newsgroup thread.

See you online!

Helen

By Helen Chen

Helen is part of the MATLAB Central team. She spends her days hanging out with really cool folks online at MATLAB Central and at MathWorks HQ in Natick.

12:44 UTC | Posted in Wiring | Permalink | 4 Comments »

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4 Responses to “Let the games begin – The Wiring Game, that is!”

1. Andy Johnson replied on April 30th, 2008 at 13:30 UTC :
   

   Shouldn’t the last line of this part of the instructions say [ 4 5 4 6] ?

   The segments for the connector between the 8 pins could be written like so.
   w = [ 2 3 2 4 ]
   [ 2 4 3 4 ]
   [ 3 4 3 5 ]
   [ 3 5 4 5 ]
   [ 4 5 5 6 ]

2. Helen Chen replied on April 30th, 2008 at 14:26 UTC :
   

   Andy is correct. We will update the page shortly.

   Thanks Andy!
   Helen

3. John replied on April 30th, 2008 at 19:24 UTC :
   

   Bridges are expensive: they cost 25 points each. In this diagram we’ve saved 22 points by connecting the two 11 pins, but we had to buy three connectors and a bridge, for a total cost of 28. The net score for this move is 17, making it a really bad move.

   Is the net scorce not 6? (-22+28)

4. Lucio replied on April 30th, 2008 at 20:42 UTC :
   

   Answers to some of your questions:

   1. Bridges can only be used for crossovers, they can’t be
   used to have two 90 angles at the same coordinate.
   2. You can not bridge pins, if I am not wrong you’ll pay
   for them but they’ll be ignored.
   3. The example that described the cost of the bridge should
   give a net score of 25+3-(11*2) = 6
   4. The size of the boards (as well as other parameters in
   the testsuite) are sampled from a distribution, therefore
   theoretically speaking there is no limit, but in practice
   you could expect that most likely the distributions of the
   board sizes wil resemble those in the sample testsuite.
   5. “T” connections and “+” connections are possible and you
   do not pay extra but the number of wires used (3 and 4
   respectively)
   6. Darkness does not mean “do not answer questions”, I’ll be around for a while, let me know if you have questions.

   Good luck,

   P.S. As orginizer I get the chance to peek at some of your
   entries :), we have started receiving some interesting
   pieces of code.

   Lucio
   The MathWorks Contest Team

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<pre class="code">
a = magic(3);
sum(a)
</pre>

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